After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed

Description

In After War Zoë H. Wool explores how the American soldiers most severely injured in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars struggle to build some kind of ordinary life while recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from grievous injuries like lost limbs and traumatic brain injury. Between 2007 and 2008, Wool spent time with many of these mostly male soldiers and their families and loved ones in an effort to understand what it's like to be blown up and then pulled toward an ideal and ordinary civilian life in a place where the possibilities of such a life are called into question. Contextualizing these soldiers within a broader political and moral framework, Wool considers the soldier body as a historically, politically, and morally laden national icon of normative masculinity. She shows how injury, disability, and the reality of soldiers' experiences and lives unsettle this icon and disrupt the all-too-common narrative of the heroic wounded veteran as the embodiment of patriotic self-sacrifice. For these soldiers, the uncanny ordinariness of seemingly extraordinary everyday circumstances and practices at Walter Reed create a reality that will never be normal. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 6 List of Abbreviations......Page 8 Preface......Page 14 Acknowledgments......Page 18 Introduction......Page 22 1. The Extra/ordinary Atmosphere of Walter Reed......Page 46 2. A Present History of Fragments......Page 84 3. The Economy of Patriotism......Page 118 4. On Movement......Page 152 5. Intimate Attachments and the Securing of Life......Page 178 Conclusion......Page 210 Notes......Page 216 References......Page 238 B......Page 254 C......Page 255 E......Page 256 G......Page 257 J......Page 258 M......Page 259 P......Page 260 S......Page 261 V......Page 263 W......Page 264