| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Robin Wagner-Pacifici. The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 210. $19.00.
Surrenders are, and have long been, a prominent feature of armed conflicts, although they have not been a prominent subject of academic study in their own right. Robin Wagner-Pacifici intends to fill this gap, at least in part, by studying surrender as a means of "decomposing sovereignty." What this grand-sounding ambition actually entails is a tracing of the "semiotic phases" of surrenders, with a view to grasping surrender's "deepest meanings and mechanisms" (p. 13).	1
The task is pursued at an extremely abstract level. Whether the author has succeeded or failed in her mission is likely, however, to remain a mystery to most readers (including, it must be confessed, this reviewer). The chief reason is the virtual incomprehensibility of the writing style. Although the text is scarcely 150 pages long, it is excruciatingly difficult to read. The blitz of postmodernist jargon is utterly unrelenting and overpowering, from the very first page to the very last one. Many readers will end up none the wiser about the "deepest meaning" of surrender by the end of the book.	. . .

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