ABSTRACT
Anglo-American we-ness broke down through a narrative process. Dissidents on both the American and British sides authored phrases-in-dispute of the Special Relationship, and those dissolved the links constitut-ing that narrative “reality.” But the process began even before those phrases-in-dispute were authored. It began when the idea of dissent occurred to British and American authors in the first place; when the events of the Suez Crisis were interpreted by each the British and the Americans in ways that demagnetized their attraction to each other and so halted the ongoing process of learning and teaching weness (Chapter 2). In this way, the Suez Crisis provoked the conditions that made it possible for the U.S. and Britain to conceive of dissolving their special friendship. In fact, this was precisely what set the Suez incident apart from the many disagreements the two countries had endured previously over the years. Whereas others never penetrated the settled magnetic attraction upon which the Special Relationship was built, the Suez incident did. But how did it accomplish this effect? What exactly happened during the Suez Crisis to unsettle the magnetic attraction that underwrote Anglo-American we-ness?
