Dirty Wars
eBook - PDF

Dirty Wars

Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature

  1. 378 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Dirty Wars

Landscape, Power, and Waste in Western American Literature

About this book

Since World War II, the American West has become the nation's military arsenal, proving ground, and disposal site. Through a wide-ranging discussion of recent literature produced in and about the West, Dirty Wars explores how the region's iconic landscapes, invested with myths of national virtue, have obscured the West's crucial role in a post–World War II age of "permanent war." In readings of western—particularly southwestern—literature, John Beck provides a historically informed account of how the military-industrial economy, established to protect the United States after Pearl Harbor, has instead produced western waste lands and "waste populations" as the enemies and collateral casualties of a permanent state of emergency. Beck offers new readings of writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit, Julie Otsuka, and Terry Tempest Williams. He also draws on a variety of sources in history, political theory, philosophy, environmental studies, and other fields. Throughout Dirty Wars, he identifies resonances between different experiences and representations of the West that allow us to think about internment policies, the manufacture of atomic weapons, the culture of Cold War security, border policing, and toxic pollution as part of a broader program of a sustained and invasive management of western space.

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Yes, you can access Dirty Wars by John Beck in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & North American Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. CONTENTS
  2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  3. INTRODUCTION: Dirty Wars
  4. 1. THE PURLOINED LANDSCAPE
  5. 2. THE PREHISTORY OF THE PERMANENT WAR ECONOMY
  6. 3. DUST BREEDING: Narratives of Inter(n)ment
  7. 4. LEARNING FROM LOS ALAMOS
  8. 5. GRIDLOCKED AND HOMELESS
  9. 6. LOOMINGS: Dread in West Texas
  10. 7. AFTER NATURE: Gothic Contamination
  11. 8. AFTER NATURE WRITING
  12. 9. THE WEST AS COLD WAR MUSEUM
  13. 10. THE FRINGE OF EMPIRE
  14. CONCLUSION: Endless War
  15. NOTES
  16. INDEX