Carruthers, Susan L. (2024) 'Re-education' : the imperial pre-history and afterlives of a pedagogical conceit. International History Review . doi:10.1080/07075332.2023.2298429 ISSN 0707-5332. (In Press)
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Abstract
In the aftermath of World War II, the terms ‘re-education’ and ‘rehabilitation’ were ubiquitous. Often employed almost interchangeably, these nouns named the aspirational outcomes sought by military government personnel, civilian administrators and relief workers—for entire national populations or particular encamped populations. In this article, Susan Carruthers traces the origins of these entangled efforts to ‘remake’ subject peoples, now primarily associated with the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan. She uncovers the hidden connections between re-education and democratization projects – typically projected as constructive and progressive – with Britain’s brutal suppression of colonial counterinsurgencies, as well as the afterlife of the concept in the United States’ Cold War era preoccupation with POW camps and brainwashing. By the 1960s and ‘70s, ‘re-education’ in the Western political lexicon denoted something pernicious practiced exclusively by cold war nemeses: in murderous camps in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Yet at the dawn of the twenty-first century, George W. Bush’s administration reanimated memories of the ‘good occupations’ that had transformed Axis foes into pacific and prosperous allies, hoping to persuade sceptics that ‘de-Baathification’ would be every bit as straightforward and successful as ‘de-Nazification’ had come to appear with hindsight. Re-education again provided a language of both obfuscation and legitimation.
Item Type: | Journal Article |
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D839 Post-war History, 1945 on L Education > LB Theory and practice of education |
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History |
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Educational change, Postwar reconstruction -- Study and teaching , Reconstruction (1939-1951) -- Study and teaching , Imperialism -- History |
Journal or Publication Title: | International History Review |
Publisher: | Routledge |
ISSN: | 0707-5332 |
Official Date: | 2 January 2024 |
Dates: | Date Event 18 December 2023 Accepted 2 January 2024 Published |
DOI: | 10.1080/07075332.2023.2298429 |
Status: | Peer Reviewed |
Publication Status: | In Press |
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons open licence) |
Copyright Holders: | Susan L. Carruthers |
Date of first compliant deposit: | 9 January 2024 |
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 January 2024 |
Open Access Version: | |
URI: | https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/182407/ |
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