There's been an incredible proliferation of work on the trauma suffered by returning troops and veterans. The discourse about you have to listen without judgment applies to everyone from the 18-year-old who went in apparently to the Special Ops forces, right? There's no disentangling levels of responsibility. But what are we listening to? And is there accounting of the war really the truth of war, or is it their truth of war?
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview.
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Buy: Fighting in a World on Fire by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/4138-fighting-in-a-world-on-fire
The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class