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3 - ‘O effeminacy! effeminacy!’: martial power, masculine power, liberal peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Mark Neocleous
Mark Neocleous
Affiliation:
Brunel University, UK
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Summary

The army has its uses

In times of civil crisis

‘Allo boys! Seen any action?

Hey boys, seen any action?

Bond together with your mate

Against the common enemy

Gang of Four, ‘He'd Send in the Army’ (1980)

‘Real men’ are back. That is, ‘real men’ are back according to a certain kind of commentary on the ‘war on terror’. In the Wall Street Journal the following story ran just one month after the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001:

A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind of man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in.

I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe. Men who are welders, who do construction, men who are cops and firemen. They are all of them, one way or another, the men who put the fire out, the men who are digging the rubble out, and the men who will build whatever takes its place.

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Information
War Power, Police Power , pp. 88 - 120
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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