Reinventing World War II : popular memory in the rise of the ethnonationalist state / Barbara A. Biesecker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Biesecker, Barbara A., author.

Series:

RSA series in transdisciplinary rhetoric.

RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Collective memory--United States--History--20th century.

Collective memory.

National characteristics, American--History--20th century.

National characteristics, American.

World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--United States.

World War, 1939-1945.

World War, 1939-1945--United States--Influence.

United States--Civilization--1970-.

United States.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (179 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

University Park, PA : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2024]

Summary:

By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly fifteen years World War II was ubiquitous across US popular and political culture. In this book, Barbara A. Biesecker explores the prestige and rhetorical power of the “Good War,” revealing how it was retooled to restore a new kind of social equilibrium to the United States.Biesecker analyzes prominent cases of World War II remembrance, including the canceled exhibit of the Enola Gay at the National Air and Space Museum in 1995 and its replacement, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Situating these popular memory texts within the culture and history wars of the day and the broader framework of US political and economic life, Biesecker argues that, with the notable exception of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, these reinventions of the Good War worked rhetorically to restore a strong sense of national identity and belonging fitted to the neoliberal nationalist agenda.By tracing the links between the popular retooling of World War II and the national state fantasy, and by putting the lessons of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, and their successors to work for a rhetorical-political analysis of the present, Biesecker not only explains the emergence and strength of the MAGA movement but also calls attention to the power of public memory to shape and contest ethnonational identity today. This book will interest rhetoricians and historians as well as students and scholars in the fields of US politics and communication studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 The Enola Gay Controversy: The Politics of Experience and Truth Telling at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

2 Popular Memory and Civic Belonging at the End of the American Century

3 Remembering the “Good War” / Refiguring Democracy: Ethico-Political Resubjectivation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

4 The Culture and History Wars of the Twenty-First Century, or, Can You Be white and Look at This?

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Other titles in this series

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-271-09899-6

0-271-09900-3

OCLC:

1449692138