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The covert sphere : secrecy, fiction, and the national security state / Timothy Melley.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, (c)2012.Description: 1 online resourceContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780801465918
  • 9781322504148
Subject(s): Genre/Form: LOC classification:
  • PS374 .C684 2012
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
Contents:
Subject: "In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation's foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since--and, Melley argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The Covert Sphere traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture. Melley interweaves Cold War history with political theory and original readings of films, television dramas, and popular entertainments--from The Manchurian Candidate through 24--as well as influential writing by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, Michael Herr, Denis Johnson, Norman Mailer, Tim O'Brien, and many others."--Publisher's website.
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Includes bibliographies and index.

"The Covert Sphere "; "Contents "; "Preface "; "Introduction: The Postmodern Public Sphere "; "Cold War Redux "; "We Now Know "; "Public Secrets "; "Mere Entertainment "; "Strategic Irrationalism "; "Representations of the Covert State "; "1. Brainwashed! "; "The Faisalabad Candidate "; "Brain Warfare "; "Little Shop of Horrors "; "Softening Up Our Boys "; "Renditions "; "2. Spectacles of Secrecy "; "Trial by Simulation "; "Political Theater "; "Recovered (National) Memory "; "The State�s Two Faces "; "Fakery in Allegiance to the Truth "; "The Fabulist Spy "

"3. False Documents " "True Lies "; "Enemies of the State "; "Psy Ops "; "The Epistemology of Vietnam "; "4. The Work of Art in the Age of Plausible Deniability "; "Narrative Dysfunction "; "Calculated Ellipsis "; "The Feminization of the Public Sphere "; "The Journalist as Patsy "; "Metafiction in Wartime "; "5. Postmodern Amnesia "; "Assassins of Memory "; "The Dialectics of Spectacle and Secrecy "; "Secret History "; "The Magic Show "; "6. The Geopolitical Melodrama "; "Ground Zero "; "Enemies, Foreign and Domestic "; "Whatever It Takes "; "Demonology "; "Melodrama as Policy " "Notes "; "Works Cited "; "Index "

"In The Covert Sphere, Melley links this cultural shift to the birth of the national security state in 1947. As the United States developed a vast infrastructure of clandestine organizations, it shielded policy from the public sphere and gave rise to a new cultural imaginary, "the covert sphere." One of the surprising consequences of state secrecy is that citizens must rely substantially on fiction to "know," or imagine, their nation's foreign policy. The potent combination of institutional secrecy and public fascination with the secret work of the state was instrumental in fostering the culture of suspicion and uncertainty that has plagued American society ever since--and, Melley argues, that would eventually find its fullest expression in postmodernism. The Covert Sphere traces these consequences from the Korean War through the War on Terror, examining how a regime of psychological operations and covert action has made the conflation of reality and fiction a central feature of both U.S. foreign policy and American culture. Melley interweaves Cold War history with political theory and original readings of films, television dramas, and popular entertainments--from The Manchurian Candidate through 24--as well as influential writing by Margaret Atwood, Robert Coover, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, E.L. Doctorow, Michael Herr, Denis Johnson, Norman Mailer, Tim O'Brien, and many others."--Publisher's website.

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