Description
Book SynopsisExplores the actions of the radical Roman Catholic antinuclear activist group Plowshares. Focuses on the closely interwoven religious and social significance of the group's actions and subsequent legal trials, which rely on performances of moral distinction to achieve the activists' aims.
Trade Review“This book is intense. Nuclear warheads, spilled blood, fiery trials, and bracing analysis fill the pages. Tobey shows how the Plowshares’ legendary protest actions—from direct monkey-wrenching to courtroom presentations—were boundary-making and -marking performances that reveal a great deal about how religious identities are constituted in fraught political and legal settings. Plowshares brings fresh and provocative insights to a host of timely issues being debated across religious studies, performance studies, and critical legal studies, among other fields.”
—Greg Johnson,author of Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition
“Plowshares is successful in its efforts to make the motives and conduct of these activists comprehensible to readers. It also shows the value of the disciplinary toolset of religious studies for doing this type of case study. . . . Scholars of American religion, peace studies, and political activism will find this book beneficial to their work.”
—Isaac Barnes May Reading Religion
“For a topic like this, hearing both from the activists themselves and from those who study them is essential. I am hopeful that by teaching all or parts of this book to students, college instructors will close the impasse between activists and the academy. To this end, Plowshares has done a great service.”
—Daniel Cosacchi American Catholic Studies
“Kristen Tobey is to be commended for this nuanced and comprehensive study which allows us to re-encounter the Plowshares at a time when their witness is more important than ever.”
—Laurie Gagne The Journal for Peace and Justice Studies
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: We in the Underground are Trying to Do Something Else: The Plowshares’
History and Development
Chapter Two: Something Deeper than Reason: The Logic and Tactics of Symbolic
Disarmament
Chapter Three: Our Only Real Credential of Discipleship: The Plowshares’ Rhetoric of
Marginality
Chapter Four: Just to Speak the Truth: The Plowshares’ Theory of the Trial
Chapter Five: Objection, Your Honor—She’s Talking about God: Communicative
Techniques and Status Negotiation
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
