Victimhood in American Narratives of the War in Vietnam

Victimhood in American Narratives of the War in Vietnam PDF

Author: Aleksandra Musiał

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-02

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1000054284

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book revisits the American canon of novels, memoirs, and films about the war in Vietnam, in order to reassess critically the centrality of the discourse of American victimization in the country’s imagination of the conflict, and to trace the strategies of representation that establish American soldiers and veterans as the most significant victims of the war. By investigating in detail the imagery of the Vietnamese landscape recreated by American authors and directors, the volume explores the proposition that Vietnam has been turned into an American myth, demonstrating that the process resulted in a dehistoricization and mystification of the conflict that obscured its historical and political realities. Against this background, representations of the war’s victims—Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers—are then considered in light of their ideological meanings and uses. Ultimately, the book seeks to demonstrate how, in a relation of power, the question of victimhood can become ideologized, transforming into both a discourse and a strategy of representation—and in doing so, to demythologize something of the "Vietnam" of American cultural narrative.

War Memories

War Memories PDF

Author: Stéphanie A.H. Bélanger

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2017-05-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 0773548513

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

War Memories explores the patchwork formed by collective memory, public remembrance, private recollection, and the ways in which they form a complex composition of observations, initiatives, and experiences. Offering an international perspective on war commemoration, contributors consider the process of assembling historical facts and subjective experiences to show how these points of view diverge according to various social, cultural, political, and historical perspectives. Encompassing the representations of wars in the English-speaking world over the last hundred years, this collection presents an extensive, yet integrated, reflection on various types of commemoration and interpretations of events. Essays respond to common questions regarding war memory: how and why do we remember war? What does commemoration tell us about the actors in wars? How does commemoration reflect contemporary society’s culture of war? War Memories disseminates current knowledge on the performance, interpretation, and rewriting of facts and events during and after wars, while focusing on how patriotic fervour, resistance, conscientious objection, injury, trauma, and propaganda contribute to the shaping of individual and collective memory. Contributors include Joan Beaumont (Australian National University, Canberra), Gilles Chamerois (University of Brest, France), Subarno Chattarji (University of Delhi, India), Nicole Cloarec (Rennes 1 University, France), Corinne David-Ives (European University of Brittany – Rennes 2, France), Jeffrey Demsky (San Bernardino Valley College, California), Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan University), Georges Fournier (Jean Moulin University, France), Annie Gagiano (University of Stellenbosch, South Africa), David Haigron (Rennes 2 University, France), Judith Keene (University of Sydney, Australia), Melissa King (San Bernardino Valley College, California), Christine Knauer (Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Germany), Liliane Louvel (University of Poitiers), Michelle P. Moore (Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre, Kingston, Ontario), John Mullen (University of Rouen, France), Lorie-Anne Duech-Rainville (Caen University, France), Elizabeth Rechniewski (Australian Research Council Discovery Project), Raphaël Ricaud (University ‘Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense’, France), Laura Robinson (Royal Military College of Canada), and Isabelle Roblin (Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale, France).

Writing Wars

Writing Wars PDF

Author: David F. Eisler

Publisher: University of Iowa Press

Published: 2022-12-14

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1609388666

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Who writes novels about war? For nearly a century after World War I, the answer was simple: soldiers who had been there. The assumption that a person must have experienced war in the flesh in order to write about it in fiction was taken for granted by writers, reviewers, critics, and even scholars. Contemporary American fiction tells a different story. Less than half of the authors of contemporary war novels are veterans. And that’s hardly the only change. Today’s war novelists focus on the psychological and moral challenges of soldiers coming home rather than the physical danger of combat overseas. They also imagine the consequences of the wars from non-American perspectives in a way that defies the genre’s conventions. To understand why these changes have occurred, David Eisler argues that we must go back nearly fifty years, to the political decision to abolish the draft. The ramifications rippled into the field of cultural production, transforming the foundational characteristics— authorship, content, and form—of the American war fiction genre.

The Distant Shores of Freedom

The Distant Shores of Freedom PDF

Author: Subarno Chattarji

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-11-18

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9389611938

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Distant Shores of Freedom analyses literary works in English written by Vietnamese refugees in the US. Fiction and memoirs by Vietnamese Americans recover stories and memories that are often different from mainstream American ones and that difference enables readers to think of the US war in Vietnam from perspectives that are missing in mainstream representations. Dwelling not only on the war and its aftermaths, Vietnamese American writings also ponder over the existential issues of exile; the idea of home; the pain of marginality and racism; the question of community formation within the US; and the complexity of diasporic lives. Subarno Chattarji raises critical questions such as who gets to speak and write, and to what ends and purposes? Who reads Vietnamese American writings and how can we account for these publications in the US over a period of time? What can and cannot be written or spoken? What is remembered and what is silenced? What traumas and memories are articulated? These questions point towards a larger context of diaspora studies as well as 'the rituals of cultural memory' that complicate our understanding of the Vietnam War and its aftermaths.

Walking Point

Walking Point PDF

Author: Thomas Myers

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0195053516

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An assessment of the most important novels and memoirs written by Americans about Vietnam, considered under the headings of realism, the classical memoir, black humour, revised romanticism. and mnemonic narrative.

Vietnam War Stories

Vietnam War Stories PDF

Author: Tobey C. Herzog

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-01-27

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 113490262X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Dealing with ten key narratives, including novels and personal accounts, Herzog locates them in the tradition of war literature as well as recent cinema, and charts the transformations of the American nation in its experience of modern war.

Jack Krause

Jack Krause PDF

Author: Billye Arturo

Publisher:

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It left serious consequences to veterans. Jack Krause is a casualty of war in Vietnam and at home. Is there any hope left for Jack Krause, a war-torn Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD and courting countless demons? He's a broken man desperate to find peace if only a fragment. But does it even exist?

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes