Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Story of This Story

2. A Nuanced Understanding of Iraq during the Ba'ath Era

3. The Ba'ath Era: Iraqi Academics Looking Back

4. The UN Sanctions: Consenting to Occupation through Starvation

5. The Occupation: Paving the Road to Exile and Displacement

6. Lives under Contract: The Transition to the Corporate University

7. Language as a Metonym for Politics

8. Final Reflections: Home, Exile, and the Future

About the Author

Louis Yako is an independent Iraqi-American anthropologist, writer, poet and journalist. He has written for a range of publications including CounterPunch, openDemocracy, Global Research and The Feminist Wire.

Reviews

'These life stories of academics from around the globe tell a vivid, inspiring and sometimes poetic history of modern Iraq'
*miriam cooke, Braxton Craven Professor of Arab Cultures, Duke University*

'Searing! The American assault aimed to 'end' the Iraqi state and shatter the culture that sustained it. Yako retrieves the stories of some sixty displaced Iraqi academics. Distillations of their experiences read as if written on shards of glass that penetrate the skin and wound the heart'
*Raymond W. Baker, Board Director, International Council for Middle East Studies, Washington, D.C.*

'Luis Yako's thinking is as compelling as his writing. 'Bullets in Envelopes' persuasively shifts the politics of argumentation. He uses anthropology to convey the existential turbulence of academics in exile after the US invasion, instead of using academics to advance the discipline'
*Walter D. Mignolo, author of 'The Politics of Decolonial Investigations' (Duke University Press, 2021)*

'Excavates a searing genealogy of loss that documents Iraqi academics' displacement, through a powerful account of the travails of higher education and the links between power and knowledge'
*Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara*