From Complicit Citizens to Potential Prey

State Imaginaries and Subjectivities in US War Resistance

Bibliographic Data

ID2370316
AuthorsEmily Brissette (Bridgewater State University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume42
Issue7-8
Pages1163-1177
Publication date2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0896-9205 • E-ISSN: 1569-1632
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0896920515582091
OpenAlexW2334596195
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited36

The movements against the Vietnam and Iraq wars gave rise to analogous resistance efforts, in the form of draft resistance and counter-recruitment, respectively. Despite their many similarities, the draft resistance and counter-recruitment movements emerged in distinct historical eras marked by very different 'state imaginaries' or assumptions about the nature of the state and people's relation to it. Drawing on original archival work, this paper excavates these state imaginaries and examines how they conditioned activists' subjectivities in each era. More specifically, this paper argues that the 1960s were marked by an imaginary of the state based on consent, which positioned draft resisters as complicit citizens and engendered a sense of personal responsibility for the war. This state imaginary was displaced in the neoliberal era by an imaginary of the state as an alien and invasive force, which positioned counter-recruitment activists (or their children) as potential prey and impelled efforts at self-defense

Biology · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Psychology

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