Introduction: making sense of modern warfare violence

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. Sofsky, Traktat über die Gewalt, 10. On Sofsky’s views, see Endreß, “Entgrenzung des Menschlichen,” 174–201.

2. On this point, see Hüppauf, “Introduction: Modernity and Violence.”

3. Patočka, “Wars of the Twentieth Century and the Twentieth Century as War,” in Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History.

4. Kristeva, Black Sun, 223.

5. Gibelli, L’officina della Guerra, 10.

6. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment; Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust. Also see Bartov, Murder in Our Midst.

7. The expression is taken from Caillois, Bellone ou la Pente de la guerre.

8. Leed, No Man’s Land, 77–80.

9. Jünger, “Über den Schmerz,” in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, 187; D’Annunzio, Le tre redazioni di un taccuino di guerra, 96.

10. Caillois, Bellone ou la Pente de la guerre, 171–2.

11. von Clausewitz, Von Kriege, 605.

12. See, for example, Lagorgette, Le rôle de la guerre, 381.

13. Ludendorff, Der Totale Krieg, 11–28. Also see Ludendorff, Kriegführung und Politik. On the notion of “total war,” see Strachan, “Essay and Reflection.”

14. The reference, of course, is to the classic study by Lasswell, “The Garrison State.”

15. Douhet, Scritti inediti, 127.

16. Jünger, “Die totale Mobilmachung” (1930), in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, 126.

17. On civilians as war targets in the First World War, Jones, “The Great War;” see also Chickering and Förster, Great War, Total War.

18. On aerial bombing during the Second World War, see Overy, The Bombing War.

19. See Portinaro, “La concezione della guerra nel realismo politico moderno.”

20. Payne, Civil War in Europe. See also, Traverso, A ferro e fuoco.

21. See, for example, Agamben, Stasis: La guerra civile come paradigma politico.

22. Gabriele Ranzato, “Un evento antico e un nuovo oggetto di riflessione.” Also see Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War.

23. Schmitt, “Ex captivitate Salus” (1946), Ex captivitate Salus, 55–9.

24. See Kalyvas, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’.”

25. Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, 89–95.

26. See Ehrenreich, Blood Rites.

27. Mosse, Confronting the Nation, 25.

28. Toynbee, A Study of History, 18. On the idea of nationalism as a ‘secular religion’, see for example Llobera, The God of Modernity, and Marx, Faith in Nation.

29. On the relationship between violence and processes of sacralization, see the classic study by Girard, La violence et le sacré.

30. Rivière, A la trace de Dieu, 37.

31. The expression is borrowed and readapted from Halévy, L'ère des tyrannies, 214. For an overview of the role of intellectuals during the First World War, see: Rasmussen, “Mobilising Minds.”

32. Rolland, “Pour l’International de l’Esprit,” in Les précurseurs, 197.

33. Mussolini, “Trincerocrazia” (1917), in Opera omnia, vol. 10, 140–3.

34. Mussolini, “La dottrina del Fascismo” (1932), in Opera omnia, vol. 34, 124.

35. Audoin-Rouzeau, “Extreme Violence in Combat and Willful Blindness.”

36. Keegan, The Face of Battle.

37. Blunden, Undertones of War, vii. Italics in the text.

38. See, for example, Hynes, A War Imagined, 427.

39. Aldington, “Review of In Retreat, by H. Read,” In Retreat, 363.

40. Campbell, “Combat Gnosticism,” 203.

41. Hynes, A War Imagined, 424; also see Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 254–5.

42. Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations, 84.

43. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 4.

44. Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 218.

45. Rossi, Il secolo di fuoco, 106.

46. Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory.

47. On this see, for example, Hynes’ analysis of Im Westen nichts Neue: Hynes, A War Imagined, 426.

48. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 43–4.

49. On this, Rossi, Il secolo di fuoco, 102–3.

50. Kaempfer, Ernst Jünger, 74.

51. See Cobley, Representing War, 11.

52. Rossi, Il secolo di fuoco, 53.

53. Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme, 79–82.

54. See Hüppauf, “Langemarck, Verdun and the Myth of New Man in Germany after the First World War,” 87.

55. Drieu La Rochelle, La comédie de Charleroi, 85.

56. Zweig, Outside of Verdun.

57. Luttwak, “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare.”

58. Valéry, “Une conquête méthodique” (1897), in Œuvres, vol. 1, 982.

59. Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues, 103. Also see Werth, Clavel soldat, 100–1.

60. Winter, War Beyond Words, 3. On the post-heroic age, see the essays in Scheipers, Heroism and the Changing Character of War.

61. Coker, The Warrior Ethos, 102.

62. See, more generally, Frisk, “Post-Heroic Warfare Revisited.”

63. Winter, War Beyond Words, 4.

64. Neumann, The Future in Perspective; also see Churchill, The Second World War.