A violent peace : race, U.S. militarism, and cultures of democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific / Christine Hong.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hong, Christine, author.

Series:

Post 45.

Post 45

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and literature--History--20th century.

War and literature.

Anti-imperialist movements--History--20th century.

Anti-imperialist movements.

Militarism--United States--History--20th century.

Militarism.

Racism--United States--History--20th century.

Racism.

Politics and literature--History--20th century.

Politics and literature.

United States--Armed Forces--East Asia--History.

United States.

United States--Armed Forces--Southeast Asia--History.

United States--Race relations--Political aspects--History.

United States--Politics and government--1945-1989.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (318 pages).

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

A Violent Peace offers a radical cultural account of the midcentury transformation of the United States into a total-war state. As the Cold War turned hot in the Pacific, antifascist critique disclosed a continuity between U.S. police actions in Asia and a rising police state at home. Writers including James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. Du Bois discerned in U.S. domestic strategies to quell racial protests and urban riots the same logic of racial counterintelligence structuring America's devastating hot wars in Asia. Christine Hong examines the centrality of U.S. militarism to the Cold War cultural imagination. She assembles a transpacific archive—including war writings, Japanese accounts of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, black radical human rights petitions, Korean War–era G.I. photographs, Filipino novels on guerrilla resistance, and Marshallese critiques of U.S. human radiation experiments—and places these materials alongside U.S. government documents to theorize these works as homologous responses to unchecked U.S. war and police power. In so doing, Hong shows how the so-called Pax Americana laid the grounds for solidarity—for imagining collective futures of total liberation.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

1 “Democracy within the Teeth of Fascism”: The Black POW and the Invisible War at Home in Ralph Ellison’s War Writings

2 Revolution from Above: Ōe Kenzaburō, the Black Airman, and Occupied Japan

3 A Blueprint for Occupied Japan: Miné Okubo and the American Concentration Camp

4 Possessive Investment in Ruin: The Target, the Proving Ground, and the U.S. War Machine in the Nuclear Pacific

5 People’s War, People’s Democracy, People’s Epic: Carlos Bulosan, U.S. Counterintelligence, and Cold War Unreliable Narration

6 The Enemy at Home: Urban Warfare and the Russell Tribunal on Vietnam

7 Militarized Queerness: Racial Masking and the Korean War Mascot

EPILOGUE

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

AAAM: Humanities & Cultural Studies (Literary Studies), 2022

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Online version: Hong, Christine, A violent peace

ISBN:

9781503612921

1503612929

OCLC:

1127194244