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‘Because it's easier to kill that way’: Dehumanizing epithets, militarized subjectivity, and American necropolitics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2021

Janet McIntosh Open the ORCID record for Janet McIntosh [Opens in a new window]
Janet McIntosh*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Janet McIntosh, PO Box 549110, MS 006, Brandeis University, Department of Anthropology, Waltham, MA 02454, USA janetmc@brandeis.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the blunt conceptual instrument of dehumanizing American military terms for the enemy in the context of the Vietnam War and the Global War on Terror. I examine language that dehumanizes American service members themselves, who are semiotically framed as expendable. Next, I explore the essentialist, semi-propositional qualities of derogatory epithets for the enemy and the affectively charged, deadly stances they encourage. I examine how generic references to the enemy during training make totalizing claims that risk encompassing civilians in their typifications. And I show that, in the context of war, the instability of derogatory epithets can manifest itself when the servicemember is confronted with the behavioral idiosyncrasies and personal vulnerabilities of actual ‘enemies’ on the ground. The putative folk wisdom found in generic references to the enemy can thus fall apart when confronted with countervailing experience; in such cases, service members may shift stance by renouncing military epithets. (Military language, epithets, slurs, generics, othering, dehumanization, necropolitics)*

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Language in Society , Volume 50 , Special Issue 4: The Generic , September 2021 , pp. 583 - 603
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

This article benefited from exceptional feedback from Chip Zuckerman, as well as invaluable suggestions and thoughts from Susan Gelman, Bruce Mannheim, Jack Sidnell, and two anonymous reviewers. I am also extremely grateful to the veterans who have shared their invaluable thoughts and written work with me.

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