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Laffey, Mark and Weldes, Jutta (2004) 'US Foreign Policy, Public Memory, and Autism: Representing September 11 and May 4.' Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17 (2). pp. 355-75.

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Abstract

In this article, we examine the social production of autism in US foreign policy discourse. Autism, we argue, is evident in the active forgetting of US foreign policy and its consequences, both in the US and abroad. It is this forgetting, promoted by the US state, that enabled many Americans to respond to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with the question ‘Why do they hate us?’ The explanation for the social production of an autistic attitude in US foreign policy, we argue, lies in the relations between institutional power and competing narratives and articulations of US foreign policy and domestic politics. The argument is illustrated through analysis of the politics of public memory at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, where, on May 4, 1970, 13 students were shot, four fatally, while protesting the US invasion of Cambodia.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Legacy Departments > Faculty of Law and Social Sciences > Department of Politics and International Studies
ISSN: 09557571
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/0955757042000245942
Date Deposited: 24 Jun 2008 13:20
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/3563

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