Daniel Denver: The War on Terror has long had a sort of unreality about it that I've struggled to put my finger on. In combat trauma, imaginaries of war and citizenship in post 9-11 America, anthropologist Nadia Abu Al-Haj writes one of the most important books about this new era of American militarism. We discuss how anti-war veterans and psychiatrists during the Vietnam War developed the idea that US troops were traumatized by perpetrating atrocities against Vietnamese people. And then we trace the development of the fields of psychiatry and psychology, which moved away from psychodynamic therapies to a biomedical model.
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