U.S. Militarism and the Terrain of Memory: Negotiating Dead Space
In 2004, the American military conducted two disastrous assaults in Fallujah, Iraq. More than 1,000 citizens were killed, 23 of Fallujah’s 28 neighborhoods were uninhabitable, and according to the military’s own estimate, upwards of 200,000 people were displaced because of the violence. Yet, despite this human catastrophe, the kind of information that emerged in the public domain during the battle foregrounded the soldier experience in war while effacing the destruction of Iraqi bodies. This tendency to foreground the soldier body is a direct result of the military’s intervention into what they conceptualize as the information environment. This book draws from the second assault in Fallujah as a case study to explicate the military’s investment in this space, which is both a consequence of the mediation of contemporary war and the need to influence knowledge considered unfavorable to military operations. The book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, war studies, memory studies, and international relations.