scholarly journals The Bounds of Narrative in Don DeLillo’s Underworld: Action and the Ecology of Mimêsis

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Andrew Bowie Hagan
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Studies ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Meaningful Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

The interrelationship of natural and cultural history in Don DeLillo’s Underworld presents an ecology of mimesis. If, as Timothy Morton argues, ecological thought can be understood as a “mesh of interconnection,” DeLillo’s novel studies the interpretation of connection through secular and postsecular faiths. Underworld situates its action in the Cold War era. DeLillo’s formal techniques examine the tropes of paranoia, containment, excess, and waste peculiar to the history of the Cold War. Parataxis and free-indirect discourse emphasize the contexts of reference in the novel, illustrating how hermeneutics informs the significance of boundaries. DeLillo’s use of parataxis exemplifies the conditions that propose and limit metaphor’s reference to reality, a condition that offers the terms for meaningful action. I utilize Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to demonstrate how Underworld situates the reference to reality in its temporal and narrative condition. The historical situation of the novel’s narrative structure allows DeLillo to interrogate the role of discourse in producing and interpreting connection. Underworld offers layers of significance; the reader’s engagement with the novel’s discourse reaffirms the conditions of a meaningful relationship with reality in the pertinence of a metaphor.

The politics of phosphorus-32: A cold war fable based on fact

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN KRIGE
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Atomic Energy Commission ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Diplomatic History ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT In July 1949, and again in January 1950 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission shipped useful amounts of the short-lived isotope phosphorus-32 to a sanatorium in Trieste, Italy. They were used to treat a patient who had a particularly malignant kind of brain tumor. This distribution of isotopes abroad for medical and research purposes was hotly contested by Commissioner Lewis Strauss, and led to a bruising confrontation between him and J. Robert Oppenheimer. This paper describes the debates surrounding the foreign isotope program inside the Commission and in the U.S. Congress. In parallel, it presents an imagined, but factually-based story of the impact of isotope therapy on the patient and his doctor in Trieste, a city on the Italian-Yugoslavian border that was at the heart of the cold war struggle for influence between the U.S. and the USSR. It weaves together the history of science, institutional history, diplomatic history, and cultural history into a fable that draws attention to the importance of the peaceful atom for winning hearts and minds for the West. The polemics surrounding the distribution of isotopes to foreign countries may have irreversibly soured relationships between Oppenheimer and Strauss, and played into the scientist's loss of his security clearance. But, as those who supported the program argued, it was an important instrument for projecting a positive image of America among a scientifc elite abroad, and for consolidating its alliance with friendly nations in the early years of the cold war——or so the fable goes.

scholarly journals Ideological Clichés and Myths as an Instrument of the U.S. Foreign Policy

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-19
Author(s):  
V I Yakunin
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

The article deals with the analysis of the myths and ideological clichés as the fundamental elements of U.S. foreign policy. The author emphasizes the necessity to study the discourses formed by political elites around the main problems and directions of the state’s foreign policy. At the same time, in the article an attempt is made to integrate the achievements of Western and Russian political science related to ideological clichés and myths. Particular attention is paid to the role of myths and ideological clichés in the legitimization of the government’s foreign policy actions in the eyes of the electorate. The author shows the history of the formation of the basic myths and clichés of the U.S. foreign policy, their implementation during and after the Cold War. The article contains a detailed analysis of the concept of American exclusivity as well as the foreign policy guidelines that follow from it. In conclusion, the author shows how the world has adopted to such an approach for conducting foreign policy by the hegemonic state and what methods it uses to counteract it.

scholarly journals Femmes d’acier. Les communistes espagnoles et la Federation Democratique Internationale des Femmes (1945-1950) = Mujeres de acero. Las comunistas españolas y la Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres (1945-1950) = Steel women. Spanish communists and the Women’s International Democratic Federation (1945-1950)

2020 ◽  
pp. 599
Author(s):  
Mercedes Yusta Rodrigo
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Political Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship

Resumen: El artículo aborda una faceta poco conocida de la historia de la militancia de las mujeres comunistas españolas en el exilio: su participación en una organización internacional, la Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres, creada en Paris en 1945 con el objetivo de federar las organizaciones de mujeres antifascistas del mundo entero. Las comunistas españolas, con Dolores Ibárruri a la cabeza, tuvieron un papel muy importante en la definición de las estrategias y la propia organización de la Federación, la cual representa un caso de movilización femenina transnacional muy importante en el marco de la Guerra fría. El articulo resitúa la creación de organizaciones femeninas antifascistas en la larga duración, describe el papel de las comunistas españolas en el seno de la FDIM, y, finalmente, analiza la relación entre la FDIM y la movilización antifranquista, que incluye la creación de un lenguaje político común en el seno de este movimiento femenino, muy marcado por el materialismo político.Palabras clave: Mujeres, Comunismo, Exilio, Internacionalismo, Antifascismo, Guerra Fría.Abstract: The article addresses a little-known facet of the history of the militancy of Spanish communist women in exile : their participation in an international organization, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, created in Paris in 1945 with the aim of federating anti-fascist women’s organizations worldwide. The Spanish communists, led by Dolores Ibárruri, played a very important role in defining the strategies and organization of the Federation itself, which represents a very important case of transnational women’s mobilization in the context of the Cold War. The article discusses the creation of women’s anti-fascist organizations in the long term, describes the role of the Spanish communists within the FDIM, and finally analyzes the relationship between the FDIM and the anti-Franco mobilization, which includes the creation of a common political language within this women’s movement, very marked by political motherhood.Keywords: Women, Communism, Exile, Internationalism, Anti-fascism, Cold War.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Sara Lorenzini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Development Institutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Global Project

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how development became a Cold War global project from the late 1940s until the late 1980s. Narrating the political, intellectual, and economic history of the twentieth century through the lens of development means dealing with ideas as much as with material transformation, recounting the ways ideas and projects affected local realities, transnational interactions, and, eventually, notions of development. In describing this trajectory, the book makes three main points. First, it argues that the Cold War was fundamental in shaping the global aspirations and ideologies of development and modeling the institutional structures that still rule foreign aid today. Second, it contends that the role of the state was crucial, and that though development projects were articulated in global terms, as narratives to frame problems and provide solutions, they actually served national purposes. Third, it argues that development institutions tried to create a universal and homogeneous concept of development but ultimately failed.

Broadening the Cultural History of the Cold War: The Emergence of the Polish Workers' Defense Committee and the Rise of Human Rights

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 104-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Brier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
International Context ◽  
East European ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opposition Group ◽  
The Cold War

The historiography of the Cold War has witnessed a revived interest in non-material factors such as culture and ideology. Although this incipient cultural history of the Cold War has focused mainly on the period from 1945 until the early 1960s, the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975 turned ideas into potent factors of international politics when East European opposition groups began to expose how their governments violated the accord's human rights provisions. By putting the emergence of one such opposition group, the Polish Workers' Defense Committee, in an international context, this article extends Cold War cultural history into the 1970s and 1980s, tracing how human rights ideas affected international and domestic politics. The Communist states' willingness to put up with the human rights provisions in the Helsinki Final Act was not sufficient to “shame” them internationally. Instead, what happened is that Western leftists, after encountering East European dissidents, increasingly perceived human rights as a precondition for the success of their own political project and hence revoked what Robert Horvath calls the “revolutionary privilege” long granted to Communist regimes. Because Communism's identity was so closely related to its struggle with the West, this criticism was particularly damaging. Only within the dynamics of a cultural framework from earlier stages of postwar history did transnational human rights advocacy become effective.

Cold War Intelligence History

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Prados
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Technical Data ◽  
Intelligence Operations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Perceptions Of Leaders ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines the role of intelligence operations in the history of the Cold War. The analysis reveals that Cold War intelligence agencies played important roles in foreign policy in the way they conditioned the perceptions of leaders and catalyzed events. One of the best examples of this is the direct influence of intelligence operations upon diplomacy in the U-2 Affair. The chapter, which suggests that intelligence activities in the Cold War produced diplomatic and military consequences and influenced international agreements, also discusses the role of espionage and technical data collection in providing diplomats with vital information for negotiations with their counterparts.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 263-280
Author(s):  
David L. Pike
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Number Of Individuals

The world after 1989 was not necessarily less likely to suffer cataclysmic destruction; however, the imagination of that destruction had moved to new hopes and fears. These new sites of imagination were not only filtered through and generated from the half century of nuclearity that had preceded them; they dwelt in its physical and fictional ruins. Far from receding into the past along with the Cold War that birthed it, the affordances of nuclear apocalypse have proliferated in the new millennium. And as their atomic origins continue to mutate, the process appears less as novelty or aberration than as an everyday matter of course. Dwelling in a permanently bunkered and postapocalyptic condition affords several insights that clinging to the fantasy of a preapocalyptic way of life surviving under the nuclear condition does not afford. Recognized as ontological, the bunker fantasy ceases to operate exclusively as a powerful tool for legitimating surveillance, separation barriers, and enclosure in the name of enhanced security. It can also help to understand the spatio-cultural history of the security imaginary that makes these measures welcome to some, tolerable to some, and abhorrent to others. It enables us to recognize apocalypse not solely as the cataclysmic, unique, and always deferred rupture in time that a nuclear war surely would be, but as an ongoing historical condition always affecting a certain—and substantial—number of individuals and groups within unequal societies, affecting them unequally, and affecting them in intersecting but not always commensurate ways.

Sequence, Series and Character in Children of Violence

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Brazil
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Louis Aragon ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Cold War

Explorations of selfhood have been central to Lessing’s work. Perhaps less recognized, however, is that this has been accompanied by an ongoing and highly self-conscious exploration of the function of literary character as a formal device. This chapter addresses this question by focusing on Lessing’s most sustained treatment of character: Martha Quest in the five novel Children of Violence (1952-69) series. Previous criticism has often read Martha autobiographically, but this chapter begins by analysing how Lessing situates her novel-series in relationship to the history of the form, from Balzac to Proust to Louis Aragon, and how her initial conception of character bears close comparison with Georg Lukács’s discussions of critical realism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization. Such questions are written into Children of Violence, in Martha’s own scenes of reading and inability to find a fictional representation of her life. The chapter closes by considering how Lessing manipulates the aesthetic requirements and tensions of the novel sequence to foreground the representational limitations imposed not just by realist theories of character, but by capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the bourgeois family. These, in the end, provide the horizon beyond which Martha cannot pass – but which Lessing’s writing can.

scholarly journals The First British-Soviet Round Table of Writers of 1984: preparation, implementation, results

2021 ◽  
pp. 183-197
Author(s):  
Mariia Kapustina
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Cultural Diplomacy ◽  
Social Criticism ◽  
Round Table ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

On September 4 – 6, 1984, Moscow hosted the first round-table meeting of British and Soviet writers, which was substantiated by the emergent thawing in foreign policy relations between the countries. The goal of this article is to examine the process of organizing and hosting the writers’ conference, as well as give assessment to its contribution to the development of Anglo-Soviet cultural cooperation during the Cold War. The research methodology is founded on the concept of cultural diplomacy, as well as the principle of historicism and systematicity, which allowed analyzing the available archival materials, publications, and reminiscences of the participants. Having examined the Great Britain-U.S.S.R. Association, the author gives special attention to the perception of this event by the British side. The article traces the transformation of attitude of the British authors towards their Soviet colleagues and the Soviet literary process overall. The round table participants expressed different opinion on the role of the writer and the degree of their social responsibility, as well as on moralization in the novel. In the course of discussion, the Soviet side often turned to the topic of peacekeeping, while the British side defended the autonomy of the writer and the right to social criticism. The conclusion is made that despite the divergence of opinions, both British and Soviet writers found the discussion productive,  and positively assessed the results of the conference. Thanks to the efforts of organizers and the objective “tiredness” from using cultural events for propaganda purposes, the first British-Soviet Round Table of Writers has fulfilled its mission, becoming an important platform for intercommunication.

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