Advocating weapons, war, and terrorism : technological and rhetorical paradox / Ian E.J. Hill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, Ian E. J. (Ian Edward Jackson), 1974- author.

Series:

RSA series in transdisciplinary rhetoric.

The RSA series in transdisciplinary rhetoric

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and society.

Weapons--Social aspects.

Weapons.

Technology--Social aspects.

Technology.

Rhetoric.

Paradox.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Technē's Paradox--a frequent theme in science fiction--is the commonplace belief that technology has both the potential to annihilate humanity and to preserve it. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism looks at how this paradox applies to some of the most dangerous of technologies: population bombs, dynamite bombs, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and improvised explosive devices.Hill's study analyzes the rhetoric used to promote such weapons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By examining Thomas R. Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, the courtroom address of accused Haymarket bomber August Spies, the army textbook Chemical Warfare by Major General Amos A. Fries and Clarence J. West, the life and letters of Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard, and the writings of Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski, Hill shows how contemporary societies are equipped with abundant rhetorical means to describe and debate the extreme capacities of weapons to both destroy and protect. The book takes a middle-way approach between language and materialism that combines traditional rhetorical criticism of texts with analyses of the persuasive force of weapons themselves, as objects, irrespective of human intervention. Advocating Weapons, War, and Terrorism is the first study of its kind, revealing how the combination of weapons and rhetoric facilitated the magnitude of killing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and illuminating how humanity understands and acts upon its propensity for violence. This book will be invaluable for scholars of rhetoric, scholars of science and technology, and the study of warfare.

Contents:

Introduction: technē's paradox and weapons rhetoric

Thomas Malthus's population bomb as a pre-text for technē's paradox

Preaching dynamite : August Spies at the Haymarket trial

Humane, all too humane : the chemical-weapons advocacy of Major General Amos A. Fries

Toward a peaceful bomb : Leo Szilard's paradoxical life

Industrial antipathy : irreparability and Ted Kaczynski's IEDs

Conclusion : in the presence of weapons and rhetoric.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780271082783

027108278X

OCLC:

1309055936