Grieving Dead Soldiers, Disavowing Loss

Cindy Sheehan and The Im/possibility of the American Antiwar Movement

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3948419
AutoresTina Managhan (Oxford Brookes University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen16
Número2
Páginas438-466
Fecha de publicación2011-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGeopolitics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14650045.2010.539081
OpenAlexW2050397838
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17

The article investigates the conditions of emergence of Cindy Sheehan (mother of soldier killed in Iraq) as a spokesperson of the American antiwar movement and its so-called ‘spark.’ It interrogates the emotional pull of the current ‘support the troops’ rhetoric and the usurpation of this and other patriotic signs and symbols by various antiwar groups as both a constraint on the realm of legitimate dissent and an enabling condition of intelligible subject formation – with particular attention given to the figure of the grieving mom. This article argues that the sympathetic, albeit tenuous, identification with this figure emerged through a simultaneous psychic identification with and disavowal of loss – with implications for the possibility and impossibility of dissent in the aftermath of 9/11

Aesthetics · Dissent · Impossibility · Political science · Politics · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Realm · Rhetoric · Sociology · Theology · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Military History and Strategy · Philosophy · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law