Ricerc@Sapienza

After offering some preliminary remarks on the notion of what makes
a “captive mind,” the article shifts its attention to one of the most signi
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ficant and yet relatively neglected early essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
the essay “War.” This text, I argue, deserves not only to be considered
the (largely forgotten) founding document of the American anti-war
movement, but it remains important even today, as it sheds light
on the inevitable contradictions and double-binds any serious move
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ment against war and for social justice must face. It is a text, in other
words, which helps us highlight some of the problems we run into—both
conceptually and practically—when we try to free our minds from a given
mindset, but we must still rely on a world that is pretty much the out
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come of the ideologies, customs, and traditions we wish to transcend.
To imagine a world free of violence and war is the age-old problem of how
to change the world and make it “new” when the practical and intel
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lectual instruments we have are all steeped in the old world we want
to abolish. Emerson’s thinking provides a basis to unpack the aporias
of what, historically speaking, the antiwar movement has been, both
inside and outside the U.S. The article concludes by examining some
recent collections of U.S. pacifist and anti-war writings, as providing
useful examples of the challenges antiwar, and more generally protest
movements, must face