Going to War with the Other: A Study of U.S. Foreign Policies of Violence
Files
Description
The objective of this book was to use Edward Said's theory Orientalism in order to increase our understanding of such how and why the United States goes to war in the manner in which it has and does. I examined all cases of United States foreign policies of overt violence, bounded by and including, Vietnam (1964-1969) and Iraq (2003-2007). What this research showed was quite contrary to Orientalism’s expectations (as well as my own). Analyzing the discursive record for the “trigger words” that should be present if Orientalist frames were used in the making/applying of US foreign policy resulted in conclusions that are not only largely unsupportive, but in some cases detrimental to the theory. While I cannot categorically deny the existence of any supportive evidence for Orientalism, there is clearly no extant pattern of such ideological discourse in any examined cases. The only exception to this is germane to the last case study, Afghanistan (2001-2003). In this case, I argued that what we are seeing is an outlier, created by a sui generis action, viz., a traumatizing terrorist attack on US soil. Instead of Orientalism, what the record shows are examples of what I’ve termed “neutral-Orientalism” and “anti-Orientalism.” The former are cases where Orientalist trigger words are present in the discourse, but they do only prosaic duty. Such lexical choices are a-ideological, often providing definitional work in the contexts considered. “Anti-Orientalism,” which is actually more common than Orientalism, is when the trigger words work in precisely the opposite way from which the theory would suggest. The evidence uncovered in this book suggests a renewed caution when dealing with questions of Orientalism, and a more robust consideration of the empirical record.
Keywords
Discourse analysis Political aspects United States; Orientalism United States; Politics and war United States; Rhetoric Political aspects United States; United States Foreign relations 20th century; United States Foreign relations 21st century;
Publication Type
Book
ISBN
9783031900679
Publication Date
2025
Publisher
Pal
City
Cham, Switzerland
Department
Department of Political Science
Disciplines
Political Science
Object Description
159 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm
Date Digital
2025
Copyright
©2025 Palgrave Macmillan
Language
en
Recommended Citation
Renfro, Evan O., "Going to War with the Other: A Study of U.S. Foreign Policies of Violence" (2025). Faculty Book Gallery. 774.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facbook/774
