What's the Role of Collective Political National Affect?

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After 9-11, there was this powerful idea of America as the innocent nation victimized by terrorists. This victim identity premised on America's fundamental innocence validated the righteousness of the American government's militarist response. And then perhaps further through today, is the general American unraveling that we're witnessing right now somehow tied up in the saw a generalized ideological crisis? You have to be able to hold those two things at the same time.

Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning to the grammar of identity politics—and more. The second in a two-part interview. Support The Dig at Patreon.com/TheDig Subscribe to New Left Review newleftreview.org/subscriptions/new Buy My Country is the World: Staughton Lynd’s Writings, Speeches, and Statements Against the Vietnam War haymarketbooks.org/books/1956-my-country-is-the-world