Your mutual preference will be the judge....
Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes
Patrick Porter
London, Hurst, 2009
x + 264 pp., ISBN: 978-1-85065-959-4 (pound14.99 paperback)
[The] 'cultural turn' is not new, but the latest version of an old reflex. For all the differences between America and the European conquerors that came before it, this is one similarity. In reaction to rebellion and resistance, America seeks to weaponise cultural knowledge, to find power in the ability to study, classify, and taxonomize peoples of the East … The effort to rearm culturally is America's modern attempt to institutionalize this wisdom, pursuing intimate knowledge about foreign societies and turning that knowledge into strategic payoffs. As a hegemon with a global military presence hires anthropologists into its forces, as the Pentagon frames Third World cultures as nests of pathological terror, and as the exotic enemy resurfaces in popular entertainment, the War on Terror marks the 'highest stage of Orientalism'.
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