Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm
Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm
ISBN: 978-0-19-891354-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press
The book explores enemy intimacies in literature, philosophy, and life writings to ask questions about the nature of amity, enmity, familiarity, and otherness. It ranges across British conflicts of the long nineteenth century, a period in which ideas about the uniqueness of combat experience coalesced with a European effort to secure a distinctive version of so-called civilized humanity. The sense that soldiers of the other side, bonded by experiences unavailable to civilians, were 'just like us' came into tension with views about the dissimilarity of other nations and races. This book considers which enemies can become familiar and which are held as other, investigating dividing lines of nation, race, religion, and culture.
Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings asks how far these affectively powerful encounters can shift individual and wider narratives about civilisation and humanitarianism. Attention to the violence that can be done by claiming and denying fellow feeling is held in tension with hope in the queer possibilities of reoriented compassion. This book uncovers a rich cultural history of enemy intimacies to consider different orientations of cosmopolitanism and humanitarian fellow feeling, while recognizing and explaining the ways in which full international kinship remains elusive.