War Machine : The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age

Pick, Daniel

ISBN 10: 0300054173 / ISBN 13: 9780300054170

Editore: Yale University Press, 1993

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292 PAGES CLEAN AND TIGHT. This book examines Western perceptions of war in and beyond the 19th-century, surveying the writings of novelists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, poets, natural scientists, journalists and soldiers to trace the origins of modern philosophies about the nature of war and conflict. Daniel Pick compares philosophical and historical modes of conflict with fictions of invasion and biological speculations about the nature and value of conquest. He discusses the work of such well-known commentators as Clausewitz, Engels and von Bernhardi, and examines little-known war writings by Proudhon, De Quincey, Ruskin, Valery, Reich and many others. Pick explores why so many major 19th-century writers justified war and even considered it rational and indespensible to social survival. And, conversely, he shows that during the course of the century, war was increasingly depicted as a machine running out of control, a locomoticve on the tracks toward total destruction. Pick looks at ways in which change and continuity, technology and destructve power, rationality and madness entered the debate on the nature and use of violence and conflict. By analyzing the contexts and evolution of discussions of war in the previous century, he aims to shed light on current thought on this subject. Size: 9vo.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: War Machine : The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age
• Editore: Yale University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1993
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0300054173
• ISBN 13: 9780300054170
• Rilegatura: Large Format Paperback
• Condizione: Very Good

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Riassunto

This intriguing study examines Western perceptions of war in and beyond the nineteenth century, surveying the writings of novelists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, philosophers, poets, natural scientists, and journalists to trace the terms of modern thought on the nature of military conflict.
Daniel Pick brings together philosophical and historical models of war with fictions of invasion, propaganda from the Great War, interpretations of shellshock and speculations about the biological value of conquest. He discusses the work of such familiar commentators as Clausewitz, Engels, and Treitschke, and examines little-known writings by Proudhon, De Quincey, Ruskin, Valery, and many others, culminating in the extraordinary dialogue between Freud and Einstein, Why War? He analyses Victorian fears of French contamination through the Channel Tunnel as well as the widespread continuing dread of German domination. And he charts the history of the pervasive European belief that war is beneficial or at least functionally necessary.
A central theme of the book is the disturbing relationship between machinery and destruction. Visions of relentless technological 'progress' and the inexorable advance of the military-industrial complex often seem to distort our understanding of war, even to reduce it to a sophisticated game played out by high-precision automata. Pick explores both the reassuring and troubling aspects of such representations. Shorn of human agency or responsibility, war apparently threatens to become technologically unstoppable, the remorseless 'perfect abattoir' of the industrial age. War Machine explores the enduring historical fascination with - and recoil from - brutal mechanical slaughter, and the modern aquiescence in, and enthusiasm for (in Rilke's phrase), 'these days of monstrously accelerated dying'.

Product Description

Book by Pick Mr Daniel