Shiny Happy Imperialism

An Affective Exploration of “Ways of Life” in the War on Terror

Bibliographic Data

ID20073074
AuthorsAmira Jarmakani (University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2020
Pages373-389
Publication date2020-02-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeCHAPTER
VenueAffect and Literature (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/9781108339339.021
OpenAlexW2998915916
ISBN9781108339339
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

How does the prospect of endless war against a terrifying abstraction mobilize and perpetuate support for its cause? While the war on terror clearly trades in notions of fear, outrage, and horror it also mobilizes a whole set of feelings less obviously associated with terror – the condescending, intimate colonial desires associated with “soft” power and humanitarian tactics. Considering romance as a lens through which to understand popular narratives about the war on terror, this essay explores intimacy and desire – as well as their intersections with discourses of happiness and honor – as forms of affective capture that serve to perpetuate the war on terror. Though the war on terror is most often associated with a mood of fear, popular stories framed through liberal individualism suggest that it also cultivates an attachment to the affective assemblage of security-happiness-compassion, echoed in the tactics of humanitarian or “soft” power

Aesthetics · Art · Compassion · Contentment · Happiness · Honor · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · Soft power · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

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