“I speak with the Voice of Things to Come”
Reading “The Vietnam Project” Today
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20156317 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Masterson (0000-0003-2869-6612, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 62-81 |
| Publication date | 2013-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Literary Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0256-4718 • E-ISSN: 1753-5387 |
| Publisher | Unisa Press (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02564718.2013.777144 |
| OpenAlex | W1981091135 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
In this article I argue that a rereading of “The Vietnam Project” allows us to explore the varied functions of what has been dubbed “war-porn” in relation to global image consumption then (with respect to Vietnam) and now (with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan). From renewed interest in depictions of torture in Waiting for the Barbarians to acknowledging swipes at the Bush and Blair administrations in Diary of a Bad Year, recent Coetzee scholarship has been enlivened by debates clustered around the most recent wounding of the American body politic: 9/11. By analysing an earlier piece, which is preoccupied with a conflict for which the wound emerged as the defining trope, I consider the prophetic power of “The Vietnam Project”. I argue that it makes for compelling reading owing to issues such as wounding, trauma, war, its mediatisation, and the associated discourses that continue to haunt the American popular and political imagination
Aesthetics · Art · Body politic · Human rights · Interrogation · Iraq war · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Torture · Vietnam War · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gender Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Narrative Theory and Analysis
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |