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Interrogating Security: A Life Story in History
Author(s) -
Smith Geoffrey S.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
peace and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1468-0130
pISSN - 0149-0508
DOI - 10.1111/0149-0508.00163
Subject(s) - memoir , secrecy , masculinity , politics , cold war , sociology , history , political science , gender studies , law
This essay seeks to synthesize personal memoir and history by focusing on the author's life experiences during his first thirteen years. Interrogating security suggests the ways in which big issues—war, peace, the threatof nuclear annihilation, security and secrecy, and youthful masculinity—hit home close to home as well as in the larger political arena. The essay also indicates important continuities between hot and cold war and—in microcosm—some of the costs of developments during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In sum, it proposes some reasons why a young boynurtured in a patriotic ambience became a ‘subversive’ adult.