If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceĪnd watch the white eyes writhing in his face, Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. . . . Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, At first, haltingly because I have not had time to scan the text and then breathlessly as I tumble through the lines that from that day become part of my life. It is 1960, aĭank afternoon in May when I, a twelve-year-old in the Tunbridge Wells County Grammar School for Girls, am asked to read out a poem. Why do I not include in this dot outline the first man on the moon? The first flight of Concorde? Then I remember Wilfred Owen. And so I started to read novels and poetry about the wars in Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq, and the Israeli-occupied territories.Ī life in a paragraph organized by violence: I arrange the dots that draw me around the spaces of Middle Eastern wars. I wanted to know how what I had done fitted into the larger scheme. Then, when I had finished writing War's Other Voices and was ready to move on, I realized that I could not, that the project had become so much part of me that I could not just turn my back on it. I went back the next year to collect the books that I had had to leave in my hurry. During my stay the Israelis invaded and dropped bombs all around the area in which I was staying. The interviews led to a book-length project, and I went back two years later to collect more material. I chose to interview women, particularly those who had written on their five-year-old war. In 1980 I returned to Lebanon as a stringer for the London-based Middle East magazine. Two years later I spent the summer and fall in a Lebanon still shaken by its first serious military encounter with its southern neighbor. In 1967, a few months after the Six-Day War, I went to Edinburgh University to study Arabic. My brother was born in 1956, the year of the war in Suez. I was born in 1948, the year of the war between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews that culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel.
Layla al-'Uthman for inviting me to meet with writers in Kuwait Ĭandice Ward for meticulous editing of chapter six, which first appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly (fall 1995).Ībove all, I owe the deepest debt of gratitude and heaps of love to Arthur Cooke, my brother, for insights into arms technology and great Gulf War talks about how Martin-Marietta was making weapons for the media to Hedley Cooke, my father, for persistent challenges to my enthusiasm about postmodern wars, and for his quietly shining inspiration to work for peace and to Bruce Lawrence, my soul-mate, for infinite moral and intellectual support and stimulation, for his nurturing care of my horror-filled nights, and, of course, for the title! Susan Thorn for a sobering contextualizing of wars I was describing Klaus Theweleit for urging me to work on propaganda and to look for its fantasy Kristine Stiles for pushing me toward the visual
Judith Stiehm for making me understand the relation between the argument of my book and the transformations in the gender arrangements of the U.S.
Ghada al-Samman for her unfailing interest and thoughtfulness in sending me books that she thought, correctly, might help me in this project įaiza Shereen for warm hospitality and great talks in Dayton and Rabat Roshni Rustomji-Kerns for reminding me how rooted I am in Western cultural paradigms, and how hard I must struggle to see the strange so as not to reinscribe what I challenge To institutions that have invited me to speak on aspects of the book: Bryn Mawr College, University of California at Riverside, University of California at Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, Cornell University (especially Davydd Greenwood) Croatian Academy of Science and Art (Zagreb, Croatia), Dayton University, Emory University, College of the Holy Cross, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Kuwaiti Writers Union (Kuwait), University of Michigan, Muhammad V University (Rabat, Morocco), University of Nijemegen (Holland), University of Sabah (Malaysia), Stanford University, Syracuse University, Tel Aviv University (Israel), Vanderbilt University, University of Vermont at Burlington.Įvelyne Accad for friendship, intense conversations, and the sharing of inaccessible texts įrancine d'Amico for introducing me to the IR and the IPE crowd at the ISA ĭaisy al-Amir for making chapter five possible Įlizabet Boyi and Valentin Mudimbe for believing in the project when it was only half-baked ĭale Eickelmann for entertaining conversations about war and music Īlex Roland for enlightening me about military historians To the Rockefeller Institute at Bellagio, Italy To all the fellows of the 1990 Gender and War Institute, Dartmouth College At Duke University, to the Women's Studies Faculty Seminar and the faculty of Asian and African Languages and Literature and the students in my war and gender classes
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