S-CAR Dissertation Defense
August 22, 2019
Derek Sweetman
"'Let Us Boldly Explode It': The Repetitions Of American Peacework"
Committee:
Richard Rubenstein (Chair)
Sara Cobb
John Dale
Abstract:
From the perspective of peace researchers, America is an enigma. While the country has been involved in more military actions than any other over the past two-hundred years and is a state that could be defined by its use of force in its westward expansion and rise to a global military empire, it is also the site of many innovations and campaigns in work for peace over the same period. Large numbers of Americans have participated in peacework, including the protests leading up to the Iraq War in 2003, which have been called the biggest in history. This study sought to explore this enigma by turning its focus on this work for peace directly.
This project involved reconceptualizing what is usually thought of as social movement activity through two lenses. The first of these recognizes the need to see activities striving for peace as work, which both shifts the perspective from actors and organizations to the actions (interventions) made as well as recognizing the extent to which this work is much more widespread than usually realized. The second relies on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conception of social forms as rhizomes in order to produce a survey of American peacework that is intentionally non-linear and, to the extent possible, non-narrative.
To do this, the study examined materials from over two-hundred years of interventions that sought to reduce warmaking by the United States, focusing on the work being done rather than who did it. This moved discussions of both history and biography toward the background while bringing forward the work itself and recognizing that, in many cases, there was little to no distinction between work and text. Many secondary sources on original interventions were themselves produced as interventions to promote peace.
The result of this is a description of the peacework rhizome that recognizes four separate points of collection (centers), indicated by the obstacle the interventions seek to overcome in order to produce peace and reduce warmaking. This study did not attempt to balance these four centers against each other to produce an ordinal list from “best” to “worst” for peace. Instead, it reaches the conclusion that the rhizome of American peacework itself must be supported and expanded, while pointing out the difficulty of translating the rhizomatic frame into the language and narratives of political organizing and political change.
