A Thousand Paper Cuts: Us Empire and the Bureaucratic Life of War (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781478029410)

In A Thousand Paper Cuts, Anjali Nath considers the paper worlds made and destroyed by US imperialism. From the slogans of anti-Communist Cold Warriors against a spectral "Paper Curtain" to the scuttled efforts of activists who sought to document America's surveillance regime amidst the US war on Vietnam, Nath offers a pre-history of the redacted visions of the Homeland Security age. Nath shows how declassified documents tell the story of American counterinsurgency at home and abroad, revealing the imperial grammar beneath the abundant redactions of contemporary visual culture. Tracing the liberal political rhetoric that inspired the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s, through to the Bush-era's exuberant secrecy to the contemporary artists who subversively repurpose redacted documents in collage and critique, Nath maps the formation of the security state, its bureaucratic regimes of surveillance, and the racial logic of transparency.

Author: Anjali Nath
ISBN-10: 1478029412
ISBN-13: 9781478029410
Publisher: Duke University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/11/2025
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d