Table of Contents

On the Cover Image: "Vertigo at Guantanamo" ixIntroduction: Fabricated Connections, Deeply Felt 11. Envisioning Civilian Childhood 272. Affective Pedagogies for Military Children 523. Recognizing Military Wives 884. Economies of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury 1375. Liberal Imaginaries of Guantanamo 1786. Feeling for Dogs in the War on Terror 212Conclusion: A Radical and Unsentimental Attention 245Acknowledgments 251Notes 257Index 329

About the Author

Rebecca A. Adelman is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of Beyond the Checkpoint: Visual Practices in America's Global War on Terror.

Reviews

This timely, sprightly, and elegantly written monograph explores how the imagination and affect converge and circulate to generate a militarized affective economy. Though her strategic use of affect theory, Adelman provides insights into emotional and interpersonal phenomena that political theorists tend to ignore. In so doing, Adelman produces a theoretical account of how affects have shaped and sustained the U.S. public's responses to persons in the military and she reflects on the ethical and political intricacies of these responses. Adelman attends in particular to the imaginings of citizens, the nation, and the state so as to develop a more precise account of the affective and imaginative mechanisms by which militarization results from this interaction. -- Don Pease, Dartmouth College
Figuring Violence is a challenging, highly original contribution to critical research on affect and the visual culture of militarization. Adelman vividly analyzes the people and nonhuman animals around whom militarized affect gets assembled in contemporary U.S. culture, scaling the fine granularities of militarized feeling and the larger imaginaries of wartime mediation, and their devastating consequences. This book calls us in and challenges us to take on the struggle against militarized violence and its powerful structures of feeling. It is a critical read for anyone willing to 'stay with the trouble' of doing the emotional and political work that de-militarization requires of us. -- Carrie Rentschler, McGill University
Deft in theory, nuanced in argument and rich in detail, Figuring Violence is one of those rare books that feels important from the first page and it will surely earn a wider readership across the study of affect, militarism, culture and everyday life in America. * Theory & Event *