Trauma Heroes and Grievable Others: Re-framing Iraqi and American Precarity in Youngblood and War Porn

Abstract:This piece investigates recent attempts by American soldier-authors to re-frame the subjectivity of the other in Iraq War literature. Drawing on Judith Butler's theory of "grievability" and the ways others are textually framed as a precursor to war, I explore two contemporary American war texts: Matt Gallagher's Youngblood and Roy Scranton's War Porn. By locating these two novels within the larger discourse of the "trauma hero" narrative and considering how both actively depict more complex Iraqi subjectivity, I argue that this kind of war literature offers possibilities for crossing cultural boundaries and exploring new modes of grief. By not only challenging the ideology of the trauma hero narrative, but discomfiting the reader seeking solace within that ideology, both texts ask us to reconceptualize our engagement with our own precarity, as a necessary first step in ethically responding to the precarious lives of those we fight.