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True Confessions of an Eight-Year-Old Warrior

Penn State University Harrisburg

Within the post–9/11 context of more aggressive, preemptive U.S. foreign policy, the author gives an autoethnographic account of growing up absorbed with war within the American culture of violence of the Vietnam period. Childhood fantasies and enactments of violence and destruction in the playing of war games and football are juxtaposed with print media accounts of "real war." The article offers critical theoretical reflections on the lived experience of U.S. violence culture, its normalcy and "taken-for-grantedness," and the ways it reinforces hegemonic ideologies of national-identity discourse and war making. The author theorizes the social-contextual requirements for the development of counterhegemonic critical consciousness, ideology critique, dissent, and protest.

Key Words: autoethnography • violence • culture • war making • U.S. foreign policy

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