Book reviews |
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| Authors: | Robert H Butts |
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| Institution: | 1. Université de Bordeaux/Institut d'Etudes Politiques , Paris;2. Department of History , Furman University , SC;3. Department of Political Science , George Washington University , Washington, DC;4. McLean , VA;5. Departments of Political Science and International and Public Affairs , Columbia University;6. School of Public Policy , University of Maryland |
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| Abstract: | Oscar Wilde captures the deep challenges relating to intelligence when he states that, ‘it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’. This statement elucidates the negative force of cognitive closure on intelligence, as well as bringing attention to the importance of an understanding of the human factor in intelligence production, and its relationship to discourse failure. Intelligence literature after 9/11 has focused on the causes and nature of intelligence failure, though few inquests have conceived intelligence as a deeply cognitive, and therefore mental and moral landscape that needs to be explored in all its complexity. Intelligence operators, like art spectators, perceive reality filtered through all sorts of implicit and explicit ideological prisms, and these ideologies, whether they are political assumptions or social orthodoxies, manifest themselves as cognitive closure, and shape the discourse in intelligence organizations, as well as between these organizations and society at large. This paper consequently argues that discourse failure is increased because of a flaw in the epistemic process among intelligence operators and consumers. |
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