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Date of Award
Spring 2020
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Historical & Political Studies; College of Arts & Sciences
First Advisor
Jennifer Riggan
Abstract
This paper demonstrates that the discourse produced by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 effectively constituted the War on Terrorism as the tenth crusade. Almost immediately, Bush’s discursive deployment of the Crusades functioned to construct a Muslim enemy. Civilizational divides found in Bush’s speeches framed the enemy other as Eastern, Muslim, and medieval. The Administration deployed rhetoric of good versus evil, us versus them, and East versus West dichotomies. This discourse also framed the war as an inevitable clash of civilizations between America and an enduring other in the Middle East. Bush’s employment of civilizational dichotomies, the Crusades, and positioning of the enemy as medieval legitimized the War on Terror against the age-old constructed enemy of the West—Islam. Through imitating the structure of the Crusades, the War on Terror became another conflict in the history of Western crusading. Using Ethnographic Discourse Analysis (EDA), this thesis provides an analysis of the language of Bush and his officials to understand its larger contextual significance, socio-political implications, and effects of discursive practices (Wotham and Reyes 2015). EDA’s purpose is to show how these practices systematically construct social dynamics and non-normative behavior. Post-9/11 political discourse in the Bush administration was further evaluated by drawing on Edward Said’s conceptualization of Orientalism, Derek Gregory’s theory of civilizational divides, and Andrew B.R. Elliott’s analytical framework of medievalism (Said 1991; Gregory 2004; Elliott 2017). These frameworks evaluate how the discursive deployment of the Crusades and medieval rhetoric cast the War on Terror as a civilizational struggle fought to preserve civilization from the “heathen.”
Recommended Citation
Hill, Catherine, "The Launching of the Tenth Crusade: Medievalism and Post-9/11 Discursive Deployments against an Enduring Enemy" (2020). Capstone Showcase. 10.
https://scholarworks.arcadia.edu/showcase/2020/is/10
The Launching of the Tenth Crusade: Medievalism and Post-9/11 Discursive Deployments against an Enduring Enemy
This paper demonstrates that the discourse produced by the Bush Administration in the aftermath of 9/11 effectively constituted the War on Terrorism as the tenth crusade. Almost immediately, Bush’s discursive deployment of the Crusades functioned to construct a Muslim enemy. Civilizational divides found in Bush’s speeches framed the enemy other as Eastern, Muslim, and medieval. The Administration deployed rhetoric of good versus evil, us versus them, and East versus West dichotomies. This discourse also framed the war as an inevitable clash of civilizations between America and an enduring other in the Middle East. Bush’s employment of civilizational dichotomies, the Crusades, and positioning of the enemy as medieval legitimized the War on Terror against the age-old constructed enemy of the West—Islam. Through imitating the structure of the Crusades, the War on Terror became another conflict in the history of Western crusading. Using Ethnographic Discourse Analysis (EDA), this thesis provides an analysis of the language of Bush and his officials to understand its larger contextual significance, socio-political implications, and effects of discursive practices (Wotham and Reyes 2015). EDA’s purpose is to show how these practices systematically construct social dynamics and non-normative behavior. Post-9/11 political discourse in the Bush administration was further evaluated by drawing on Edward Said’s conceptualization of Orientalism, Derek Gregory’s theory of civilizational divides, and Andrew B.R. Elliott’s analytical framework of medievalism (Said 1991; Gregory 2004; Elliott 2017). These frameworks evaluate how the discursive deployment of the Crusades and medieval rhetoric cast the War on Terror as a civilizational struggle fought to preserve civilization from the “heathen.”
Comments
International Studies