Rebecca A. Adelman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281671
- eISBN:
- 9780823284788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281671.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
The materials analyzed in this chapter illuminate the paradoxical combination of public recognition and state neglect of military spouses, who receive contingent visibility as a function of their ...
More
The materials analyzed in this chapter illuminate the paradoxical combination of public recognition and state neglect of military spouses, who receive contingent visibility as a function of their proximity to suffering, along with a chronic suspicion about their reliability. To contextualize the figuring of the military spouse, the chapter begins with two key histories: that of women’s militarization during the War on Terror and that of the U.S. military’s approach to military wives. Affective investments in military spouses (read: wives) are made explicit in presidential proclamations of appreciation for military spouses and their sacrifice, the first objects of analysis here. Operational Security materials, the second, reveal the other side of official regard for military spouses, which identifies them as vital but weak links in national security. Conversely, the American Widow Project, a network organized and maintained by military widows, offers an alternative to these official discourses, recognizing widows’ sacrifices but also embracing a vision of widowhood that is independent and pleasure-seeking, and the chapter’s penultimate section analyzes their work. The chapter concludes with a consideration of military spouse PTSD, an emerging line of inquiry that simultaneously maps and submerges the subject-position of the military spouse.Less
The materials analyzed in this chapter illuminate the paradoxical combination of public recognition and state neglect of military spouses, who receive contingent visibility as a function of their proximity to suffering, along with a chronic suspicion about their reliability. To contextualize the figuring of the military spouse, the chapter begins with two key histories: that of women’s militarization during the War on Terror and that of the U.S. military’s approach to military wives. Affective investments in military spouses (read: wives) are made explicit in presidential proclamations of appreciation for military spouses and their sacrifice, the first objects of analysis here. Operational Security materials, the second, reveal the other side of official regard for military spouses, which identifies them as vital but weak links in national security. Conversely, the American Widow Project, a network organized and maintained by military widows, offers an alternative to these official discourses, recognizing widows’ sacrifices but also embracing a vision of widowhood that is independent and pleasure-seeking, and the chapter’s penultimate section analyzes their work. The chapter concludes with a consideration of military spouse PTSD, an emerging line of inquiry that simultaneously maps and submerges the subject-position of the military spouse.
Rebecca A. Adelman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281671
- eISBN:
- 9780823284788
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281671.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of the war on terror and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, ...
More
Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of the war on terror and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and righteous anger—are far more pleasurable and durable than their predecessors. Hence, they are deeply compatible with the ambitions of a state embroiling itself in a perpetual and essentially unwinnable war. Surveying the cultural landscape of this sprawling conflict, Figuring Violence reveals the varied mechanisms by which these affects have been militarized. This book tracks their convergences around six types of beings: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, Guantánamo detainees, and military dogs. All of these groups have become preferred objects of sentiment in wartime public culture, but they also have in common their status as political subjects who are partially or fully unknowable. They become visible to outsiders through a range of mediated and imaginative practices that are ostensibly motivated by concern or compassion. However, these practices actually function to reduce these beings to abstracted figures and so make them easy targets for affective investment. This is a paradoxical and conditional form of recognition that eclipses the actual beings upon whom those figures are patterned, silencing their political subjectivities and obscuring their suffering. As a result, they are erased and rendered hypervisible at once. Figuring Violence demonstrates that this dynamic ultimately propagates the very militarism that begets their victimization.Less
Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of the war on terror and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and righteous anger—are far more pleasurable and durable than their predecessors. Hence, they are deeply compatible with the ambitions of a state embroiling itself in a perpetual and essentially unwinnable war. Surveying the cultural landscape of this sprawling conflict, Figuring Violence reveals the varied mechanisms by which these affects have been militarized. This book tracks their convergences around six types of beings: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, Guantánamo detainees, and military dogs. All of these groups have become preferred objects of sentiment in wartime public culture, but they also have in common their status as political subjects who are partially or fully unknowable. They become visible to outsiders through a range of mediated and imaginative practices that are ostensibly motivated by concern or compassion. However, these practices actually function to reduce these beings to abstracted figures and so make them easy targets for affective investment. This is a paradoxical and conditional form of recognition that eclipses the actual beings upon whom those figures are patterned, silencing their political subjectivities and obscuring their suffering. As a result, they are erased and rendered hypervisible at once. Figuring Violence demonstrates that this dynamic ultimately propagates the very militarism that begets their victimization.
