The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's EndHow do we know when a war ends? For many, the resolution of a conflict comes not with the last traces of smoke left on the battlefield, but with the formal ceremonies of surrender: possession and repossession, the signing of treaties, and the pomp and circumstance that mark them. Historically, most conflicts have ended with such rituals. But, as Robin Wagner-Pacifici reveals in The Art of Surrender, they should not be seen as merely a matter of giving up. They also offer ways of holding back and signal early fault lines that give rise to later undoings and conflicts. The Art of Surrender explores these ritual concessions as acts of warfare, performances of submission, demonstrations of power, and representations of shifting, unstable worlds. Wagner-Pacifici analyzes three significant military surrenders in the history of warfare—the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century, the American Civil War, and World War II—through the use of period documents and forms, maps, literature, witness accounts, photographs, and paintings that were left as proof of victory and defeat. In her analyses of such archival material and iconic works of art, she considers the limits of sovereignty at conflict's end, showing how the ways we concede loss can be as important as the ways we claim victory. |
Contents
Toward a Political | 25 |
Bearing Witness at Breda 29 What Is a Witness? 36 The Visual Order of | 56 |
The Nature of the Surrendering Exchange 69 The Objects of Exchange | 74 |
Transactional Objects of the Process of Surrender 82 Pledges Oaths Promises | 96 |
SOVEREIGNTY AND ITS AFTERLIFE | 98 |
What Is Sovereignty? 100 Types of Sovereignty 101 Erotic Exchange and | 119 |
THE DEEP STRUCTURE OF SURRENDER | 133 |
Performatives and Transformations 144 Representations 145 Copies and Their | 149 |
Bibliography | 189 |
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The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End Robin Wagner-Pacifici Limited preview - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
actions Allied Ambrogio Spinola American analysis Appomattox army authority Cambridge century ceremony chapter Chicago Press Civil claim concept Confederate conflict cross-witnessing Culture defeated deictic demonstrative Derrida Diego Velázquez Dutch early modern Émile Benveniste emperor enemy event figures force genres gestures gift Giorgio Agamben Grant hand historian historical identity J. L. Austin Japan Japanese King Lee's Louis Marin magnanimity maps meaning Michael military notes painting parties peace performative photograph plate Princeton proxies realm recognition relations render representation role Rudolf Arnheim scenes of surrender semiotic Siege of Breda signature signing social soldiers sovereign sovereignty space Spain Spanish speech acts surrender agreement surrender document Surrender of Breda sword symbolic temporal territory Theory tions trans transactions transformation Translated treaty unconditional surrender undoing University of Chicago University Press USS Missouri vanishing point vanquished Velázquez victor violence visual Winik witnesses World World War II writes York