In this unique book, Peter Alexander Meyers leads us through the social processes by which shock incites terror, terror invites war, war invokes emergency, and emergency supports unchecked power. He then reveals how the domestic political culture created by the cold war has driven these developments forward since 9/11, contending that our failure to acknowledge that this cold war continues today is precisely what makes it so dangerous.With eloquence and urgency Meyers argues that the mantra of our time - 'everything changed on 9/11!'1 - is false and pernicious. By contrast, Civic War and the Corruption of the Citizen provides a novel account of long-term transformations in the citizen's experience of war, the constitution of political powers, and public uses of communication, and from that firm historical basis explains how a convergence of these social facts became the pretext for unprecedented opportunism and irresponsibility after 9/11. Where others have observed that our rights are under attack, Meyers digs deeper and finds that today 'government by the people' itself is at risk.Sparkling with historical and philosophical insight, this is a dramatic diagnosis of the American political scene that at once makes clear the new position of the citizen and the necessity for active citizenship if democracy is to endure.

About the Author
Peter Alexander Meyers is professor of American Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and is presently a visiting researcher in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Reviews
"This is among the most important analyses that I've seen of what has happened to politics in the wake of the September 11 attacks. No other thinker has so clearly articulated how both terrorism and the response to it threaten democracy by suppressing contentious political speech. Meyers's argument is timely, impressively learned, and compelling." - Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226522081
Author Peter Alexander Meyers
Format Hardback
Page Count 376
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 652g
Dimensions(mm) 24mm * 16mm * 3mm