In/visible War: The Culture of War in Twenty-first-Century America

Description

In/Visible War addresses a paradox of twenty-first century American warfare. The contemporary visual American experience of war is ubiquitous, and yet war is simultaneously invisible or absent; we lack a lived sense that “America” is at war. This paradox of in/visibility concerns the gap between the experiences of war zones and the visual, mediated experience of war in public, popular culture, which absents and renders invisible the former. Large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance. For these citizens, war seems abstract, or may even seem to have disappeared altogether due to a relative absence of visual images of casualties. Perhaps even more significantly, wars can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority of Americans.   Yet, the normalization of twenty-first century war also renders it highly visible. War is made visible through popular, commercial, mediated culture. The spectacle of war occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of celebrations at athletic events and in films, video games, and other media, coming together as MIME, the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network.     Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction: The Paradox of War’s In/visibility Part I: Seeing War Chapter 1: How Photojournalism Has Framed the War in Afghanistan Chapter 2: Returning Soldiers and the In/visibility of Combat Trauma Chapter 3: (Re)fashioning PTSD’s Warrior Project Chapter 4: Unremarkable Suffering: Banality, Spectatorship, and War’s In/visibilities Transition “War Is Fun,” a Photo-Essay Chapter 5: Laying bin Laden to Rest: A Case Study of Terrorism and the Politics of Visibility Part II: Not Seeing War Chapter 6: Digital War and the Public Mind: Call of Duty Reloaded, Decoded Chapter 7: A Cinema of Consolation: Post-9/11 Super-Invasion Fantasy Chapter 8: Differential Configurations: In/visibility Through the Lens of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) Chapter 9: The Canine-Rescue Narrative, Civilian Casualties, and the Long Gulf War Part III: Theorizing the In/visibility of War Chapter 10: The In/visibility of Liberal Peace: Perpetual Peace and Enduring Freedom Chapter 11: Why War? Derrida, Baudrillard, and the Absolute Televisual Image Chapter 12: War in the Twenty-First Century: Visible, Invisible, or Superpositional? Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Photo Credits Index