The Ethics of Trauma: Moral Injury, Combat, and U.S. Empire

In their book The Empire of Trauma, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman ask, "[W]hen we consider the soldier suffering from nightmares and flashbacks as psychologically wounded rather than as a malingerer or a hero, what does this view of war and those who participate in it tell us," (2009: 8)? Taking inspiration from their question, I consider the political and ethical consequences of shifting understandings of the trauma of soldiers for how an American public might come to know and understand U.S. wars-past and present. 

"We are Not Red Indians" (We Might all Be Red Indians) Anticolonial Sovereignty Across the Borders of Time, Place and Sentiment

In a 2004 interview Yasser Arafat, in a state of near confinement and exhaustion, reflected upon his incapacity to move without the immediate threat of assassination, about the Palestinian right of return, about American elections, and his achievements. Among these achievements was the fact that "the Palestine case was the biggest problem in the world" and that Israel had "failed to wipe us out."