Defacing Power: The Aesthetics of Insecurity in Global Politics

Defacing Power investigates how nation-states create self-images in part through aesthetics and how these images can be manipulated to challenge those states' power. Radio, television, film, and the Internet have long been employed by both states and counterpower agents for their own image-making purposes. Indeed, both sides have treated these media as contested territory within which to wage their battles of words and images.

Moving beyond theory, Brent Steele illustrates his provocative argument about the vulnerability of power with examples from recent history: the My Lai massacre and the Fall of Saigon, September ii and the al-Qaeda communiquTs, the atrocities at Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. response to the Asian tsunami of December 2004. He demonstrates how a nation-state—even one as powerful as the United States—comes to feel threatened not only by other nation-states or terrorist organizations but also by unexpected events that challenge its self-constructed image of security. At the same time, Steele shows that as each generation uses available media to create and re-create a national identity, technological innovations allow for the shifting, upheaval, and expansion of the cultural structure of a nation.

Brent J. Steele is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Kansas.