How To Find What's Lost When What's Lost Is You: The Presence of Disappearing Bodies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq War Literature
The focus of this study is on disappearing bodies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq war literature. The term “disappearing body” has several connotations. Disappearing bodies refers to throwaway or neglected bodies, bodies that routinely absorb into the landscape. Women and African Americans typically fall into this category, but at times, Vietnamese, Afghani, or Iraqi people may fall into this category as well. The race, gender, and region of the author often determines how Others are posited in the literature. Disappearing bodies also occur in the form of grotesquerie. These bodies appear as dismembered, decapitated, mutilated, and wasting away. Bodies disappear in male and female literature, black and white, but these bodies disappear in different ways depending on the race and gender of the authors and characters. Bodies not only disappear physically, but also psychologically and emotionally. Erasure of identity appears to be the most prominent way bodies disappear in the authors and characters presented. White males, African Americans, and women all experience some form of erasure, but how that erasure occurs and who instigates that erasure is different for each race and gender. The images of disappearing bodies float in and out of the texts, and the varied ways in which people disappear confront the issues of unjust wars, psychological struggle, racism, sexism, and inequality among the troops.
disappearing bodies, erasure, PTSD, throwaway bodies, trauma, war, American Literature
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