Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror

By Bruce Holsinger

President Bush was roundly criticized for likening America's antiterrorism measures to a "crusade" in 2001. Far from just a gaffe, however, such medievalism has become a dominant paradigm for comprehending the identity and motivations of America's perceived enemy in the war on terror. Yet as Bruce Holsinger argues here, this cloying post-9/11 rhetoric has served to obscure the more intricate ideological machinations of neomedievalism, the global idiom of the non-state actor: non-governmental organizations, transnational corporate militias, and terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.

Neomedievalism, Neoconservatism, and the War on Terror addresses the role of neomedievalism in contemporary politics. While international-relations theorists promote neomedievalism as a model for understanding emergent modes of global sovereignty, neoconservatives exploit its conceptual slipperiness for their own tactical ends. Holsinger concludes with a careful parsing of the Bush administration's torture memos, which enlist neomedievalism's model of feudal sovereignty on behalf of the abrogation of human rights.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0976147599
• ISBN13: 9780976147596
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Prickly Paradigm Press
• Length: 117 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 7.1"