Giorgio Mariani rigorously engages with the essential question of what makes a text explicitly anti-war. Ranging from Emerson and Joel Barlow to Maxine Hong Kingston and Tim OBrien, Waging War on War explores why sustained attempts at identifying the anti-war texts formal and philosophical features seem to always end at an impasse. Mariani moves a step beyond to construct a theoretical model that invites new inquiries into Americas nonviolent, nonconformist tradition even as it challenges the ways we study U.S. warmaking and the cultural reactions to it. In the process, he shows how the ideal of nonviolence and a dislike of war have been significant, if nonhegemonic, features of American culture since the nations early days.
Ambitious and nuanced, Waging War on War at last defines anti-war literature while exploring the genres role in an assertive peacefighting project that offered--and still offers--alternatives to violence.
