Objects of Warfare: Infrastructures of Race and Napalm in the Vietnam War

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines napalm as an epistemology of U.S militarism, developing the framework of “objects of warfare” to describe political relations intertwined with racialized personhood and militarized objecthood. The first half traces the racial logics of infrastructural warfare in the Vietnam War, while the second situates the construction of Asian racial form via liberal humanism within cultural representations of napalm in the war’s afterlives. By examining the interrelatedness of napalm’s physical violence and its political effects, this article suggests objects of warfare offer a framework to trace links between militarized objecthood and the lingering specters of Cold War liberalism and imperialism.