Iraq War Cultures

Cynthia Fuchs is Director of Film & Media Studies at George Mason University, as well as Associate Professor of English, African & African American Studies, and Film & Video Studies, with a focus on documentary. She is Film-TV Editor at PopMatters.com.Joe Lochard is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University. He teaches American literature and specializes in the literature of U.S. slavery. He directs the Antislavery Literature Project.

• Contents: Cynthia Fuchs/Joe Lockard: Introduction: «Shrapnel throughout the Body»: U.S. War Culture and Iraq – Patrick Brantlinger: Shopping on Red Alert: The Rhetorical Normalization of Terror – Leanne McRae: Memory, Meaning, and Mass Destruction – Murray Pomerance: Bagdad Bad – Anna Froula: «America, Fuck Yeah!»: Patriotic Puppetry in Team America: World Police – Tony Perucci: Fight or Fuck: Performing Neoliberalism at Abu Ghraib – David Clearwater: «Zap the Iraqoids»: War, Video Games, and Perception Management – Cynthia Fuchs: «You Just Want Stories»: Iraqi Subjects, American Documentaries – Zoe Trodd/Nathaniel Nadaff-Hafrey: «George, They Were Only Movies»: The Vietnam Syndrome in Iraq War Culture – Stephanie Athey: The Torturer’s Tale: Tony Lagouranis in Mosul and the Media – Henry Giroux: From Auschwitz to Abu Ghraib: Rethinking Adorno’s Politics of Education.

«As the Iraq war ‘ends’ for most people in the U.S., it disappears from discourse – other than in terms of troop suffering. But for millions of people, the war cannot conclude so easily. If acts of ghastly hubris like this one are to be avoided in future, it will be as a result of our understanding Iraq war cultures. The editors and authors have done a marvelous job in excavating the horror of American empire. And despite our belligerent history, books like this one show that another America can come into being.» (Toby Miller, Author of ’Makeover Nation’)«This is a smart and provocative volume that navigates a broad path through the cultural noise that is the war in Iraq. In subjects ranging from Abu Ghraib to video games to shopping as a response to war, these essays collectively construct an analytical frame for recognizing the complex economic, social, and political forces at work in the performance that is the Iraq war in U.S. culture.» (Susan Jeffords, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Washington, Bothell)