Have we ever been civilian? On war’s expansion beyond the battlefield.

As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war as manifest within humanity’s individual, sociocultural, and biological existence. Author Mike Hill identifies three human-focused disciplines newly turned against humanity (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience) and questions the very notion of society. This episode brings Hill into conversation with Robyn Marasco and Warren Montag.

Mike Hill is professor of English at SUNY Albany. He is coauthor (with Warren Montag) of The Other Adam Smith and author of After Whiteness and On Posthuman War.

Robyn Marasco teaches political theory at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Marasco is author of The Highway of Despair.

Warren Montag is professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Montag is author of several books including Althusser and His Contemporaries.

Episode references:

Immanuel Kant

Claus von Clausewitz (On War)

Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3–24) of 2006

The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (from University of Chicago Press)

The Gates Doctrine

National Security Strategy

American Sniper (opening of the film)

Alain Badiou

Topics:

US war strategy (specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan)

Gender politics in the US

Crisis in the humanities

Climate change

Terms/keywords:

Civilianized

De-civilianized

Identity infiltration

Computation

“Moving through the three fields of study identified in what follows as war disciplines (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience), computational technology is key … because, like war, it is both ubiquitous and largely invisible.” (from the Preface, page xxi)