In a century torn by violent civil uprisings, civilian bombings, and genocides, war has been an immediate experience for both soldiers and civilians, for both women and men. But has this reality changed our long-held images of the roles women and men play in war, or the emotions we attach to violence, or what we think war can accomplish? This provocative collection addresses such questions in exploring male and female experiences of war--from World War I, to Vietnam, to wars in Latin America and the Middle East--and how this experience has been articulated in literature, film and drama, history, psychology, and philosophy. Together these essays reveal a myth of war that has been upheld throughout history and that depends on the exclusion of "the feminine" in order to survive.The discussions reconsider various existing gender images: Do women really tend to be either pacifists or Patriotic Mothers? Are men essentially aggressive or are they threatened by their lack of aggression? Essays explore how cultural conceptions of gender as well as discursive and iconographic representation reshape the experience and meaning of war. The volume shows war as a terrain in which gender is negotiated. As to whether war produces change for women, some contributors contend that the fluidity of war allows for linguistic and social renegotiations; others find no lasting, positive changes. In an interpretive essay Klaus Theweleit suggests that the only good war is the lost war that is embraced as a lost war.Originally published in 1993.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Preface
Introduction

Contributors

Pt. I Presenting the Unpresentable

Ch. 1 Gendered Translations: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah 3

Ch. 2 Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Terror, and Argentina's "Dirty War" 20

Pt. II War Mythopoeia

Ch. 3 The Threshold of Thrill: Life Stories in the Skies over Southeast Asia 43

Ch. 4 Techno-Muscularity and the "Boy Eternal": From the Quagmire to the Gulf 67

Pt. III Home/Front?

Ch. 5 Notes toward a Feminist Peace Politics 109

Ch. 6 Sisters and Brothers in Arms: Family, Class, and Gendering in World War I Britain 128

Ch. 7 Daughtering in War: Two "Case Studies" from Mexico and Guatemala 148

Pt. IV Engendering Language

Ch. 8 [WO]-man, Retelling the War Myth 177

Ch. 9 Not So Quiet in No-Woman's-Land 205

Ch. 10 Wars, Wimps, and Women: Talking Gender and Thinking War 227

Pt. V The Politics of Representation

Ch. 11 Sexual Fantasies and War Memories: Claude Simon's Narratology 249

Ch. 12 Danger on the Home Front: Motherhood, Sexuality, and Disabled Veterans in American Postwar Films 260

Pt. VI Interpretive Essay

Ch. 13 The Bomb's Womb and the Genders of War (War Goes on Preventing Women from Becoming the Mothers of Invention) 283

Postscript 317

Select Bibliography 327

Index 329