The Ephemera of Dissident Memory: Remembering Military Violence in 21St-Century American War Culture
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THE EPHEMERA OF DISSIDENT MEMORY: REMEMBERING MILITARY VIOLENCE IN 21 ST -CENTURY AMERICAN WAR CULTURE Bryan Thomas Walsh Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Communication and Culture Indiana University February, 2017 i Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _______________________________________________ John Lucaites, PhD. _______________________________________________ Robert Ivie, PhD. _______________________________________________ Robert Terrill, PhD. _______________________________________________ Edward Linenthal, PhD. Date of Defense: January 25 th , 2017 ii Acknowledgements If I’m the author of this manuscript, then my colleagues are its grammar. I am forever grateful to the following professors for serving a vital role in my intellectual, emotional, and political development: Susan Owen, Anne Demo, Jim Jasinski, Kendall Phillips, Bradford Vivian, Derek Buescher, Diane Grimes, Linda Alcoff, Roger Hallas, and Dexter Gordon. I first pursued a career in higher education, because I believed that every student should go through an education similar to my own – one that transforms the way we see the world and our place in it. For everything, thank you. I could not have completed this manuscript were it not for my fellow graduate colleagues. Theirs was a friendship of comradery, and they kept me grounded in the face of severe academic challenges. To my friends, thank you: Dan Mistich, Matt Richards, Cole McGuffey, Antonio de la Garza, Jason Qualls, Zeynep Yasar, Cortney Smith, Maggie Rossman, Josh Coonrod, Allison Chellew, Landon and Ashley Palmer, Katie Lind, Javier Ramirez, Jessica Rudy, Valerie Wieskamp, Shaina Bridget, James Paasche, Courtney Olcott, Laura Ivins, Emily Cram, Bridget Sutherland, Rudo Mudiwa, Kathy Tiege, Leya Taylor, Brian Amsden, Jeremy Gordon, Jamie Hook, Eric Zobel, Peter Campbell, Chloe Hansen, and Katie Dieter. I’m also thankful to Brick and Emma and Theo. Over the years, I received helpful feedback from several gracious and insightful scholars, and this project is undoubtedly stronger as a result. Thank you Carole Blair, Bill Balthrop, Robert DeChaine, Dan Brouwer, Roger Stahl, Ned O’Gorman, Jeremy Engels, Ron Green, Chuck Morris, Raymie McKerrow, Dana Cloud, Barbara Biesecker, Erin Parcell, and Lynne Webb. Also, I’m also grateful to the following people for allowing me to reprint their photographs: Paul Wellman, Ron Dexter, Steve Lerner, Diana Lopez, David Fox, and Art BeCAUSE. The College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University awarded me with a generous dissertation fellowship and several research grants to help finance the development of this manuscript. Special thanks to my dissertation committee – professors John Lucaites, Bob Ivie, Robert Terrill, and Ed Linenthal. John, in particular, has been a vital source of guidance and advice throughout this project’s development, and I am forever grateful to him. Finally, I dedicate this project to two people, without whom this dissertation – and all of my experiences leading up to it – would not be possible. To my loving parents, Tom and Debbie. iii Bryan Thomas Walsh THE EPHEMERA OF DISSIDENT MEMORY: REMEMBERING MILITARY VIOLENCE IN 21 ST -CENTURY AMERICAN WAR CULTURE The militarization of 21 st -century American society is an entrenched and volatile system of institutional and cultural power, one that is not likely to go away despite the national fantasy that withdrawing US troops from foreign territories will inaugurate a new era of peace and return us to “the way things were.” This dissertation explores the domestic and transnational legacies of the “War on Terror,” arguing that America’s contemporary war campaigns are waged in part against the memories of state-sanctioned military violence and those oft- overlooked populations who struggle against it. I argue that increasingly expansive atmospheres of US military violence prompts state institutions to govern the norms through which war-torn populations can make sense of personal loss and attribute significance to the complex histories of America’s prolonged military campaigns. More importantly, the dissertation will also bring attention to those ephemeral but nonetheless vital acts of dissident memory that populations engender in order to negotiate, contest, and occasionally dismantle the conditions of state-sanctioned military violence that routinely compromise the safety and integrity of their lives. The case studies that comprise this project include: the bereaved who mourn the deaths of U.S. soldiers at official military cemeteries and vernacular memorials (chapter 2); civilian communities who live adjacent to US military facilities that dump vast amounts of toxins into their ecological environments (chapter 3); and (un)documented Latinos/as who persistently confront increasingly militarized US-Mexico borderlands (chapter 4). By attending to each these war-torn populations and the spaces of their attrition, I argue that America’s war on terrorism is increasingly becoming a war on memory, as it is precisely this site of cultural struggle where US military institutions strive to sustain power and communities vie for a less dismal future. _______________________________________________ John Lucaites, PhD. _______________________________________________ Robert Ivie, PhD. _______________________________________________ Robert Terrill, PhD. _______________________________________________ Edward Linenthal, PhD. iv Table of Contents Acceptance Page . ii Acknowledgements . iii Abstract . iv List of Figures . vi Chapter 1: Wartime Matters . 1-34 Chapter 2: Entrenched Rhetorical Norms, Dissident Memory, and the Necropoleis of 21 st - Century American War Culture . 35-74 Chapter 3: Forgetting Histories of Toxic Military Violence and the Corporeality of Dissident Memory: The Case of the Kelly Air Force Base . 75-124 Chapter 4: ¿No Olvidado? : 21 st -century US military Violence and the Politics of Remembering Missing Migrants along US-Mexico Borderlands . 125-157 Chapter 5: The Imperatives of Rhetorical Critique in Times of War . 158-167 Bibliography . 169-193 Appendix: . 194-202 Curriculum Vita v List of Figures Figure 1: Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. 45 Figure 2: Section 60 of the Arlington National Cemetery. 51 Figure 3: The Arlington West Memorial during a Sunday Night. 57 Figure 4: A Cenotaph for Paul T. Makamura at Arlington West . 59 Figure 5: 2005 Environmental Justice March Outside of the Kelly AFB. 95 Figure 6: Purple Crosses Outside of a Home in the “Toxic Triangle” . 97 Figure 7: Marine Combat Veteran Jim Fontella . 110 Figure 8: Protest and Vigil for José Antonio Elena Rodríguez . 125 Figure 9: Anonymous Migrant Graves at Holtville Terrace Park Cemetery . 135 Figure 10: Temporary Memorial for Dilcy Yohan Sandres Martinez . 139 Figure 11: Migrant Materials Abandoned along the US-Mexico Border . 141 Figure 12: “State of Exception” . 145 vi Chapter 1 “Wartime Matters” It was August 25 th , 2004 – Carlos Arredondo’s birthday. He spent the day tinkering around his home in Hollywood, Florida, awaiting a phone call from his son who was serving a tour of duty in Iraq, when a government vehicle approached his home. Three marine officers stepped out of the car, walked solemnly toward Carlos, and informed him that his son, Lance Cpl. Alexander Arredondo, died after a bullet pierced his left temple during “hostilities” in Najaf. It was Alexander’s second tour of duty in Iraq. Rampant with heartbreak, Carlos grabbed a sledgehammer and torch from his garage, along with several tanks of gasoline and propane, and marched toward the government vehicle. He shattered the windows of the vehicle first. Then he forced himself inside, splashed the interior with gasoline, and sparked a match, setting himself and the vehicle ablaze. It only took a second or two for the propane tank to explode. Initially confounded by Carlos’s grief-stricken fury, the military officers eventually grappled Carlos from the incinerated vehicle, but not before flames consumed most of his body. Once Alex “returned home,” Carlos attended his funeral in a stretcher. After ten months of physical rehabilitation, Alex’s death continued to weigh heavily on Carlos and, in the Spring of 2005, he consecrated his truck as a mobile memorial for Alex, traversing cities across the United States in order to “share my mourning with the American people.” 1 The memorial consists of a flag-draped coffin that carries Alex’s prized possessions such as a soccer ball, a toy truck, a pair of shoes, a Winnie the Pooh doll, and a military uniform. Carlos parks his car in popular thoroughfares and sits quietly by the makeshift memorial for hours at a time, occasionally interacting with those who find themselves moved by the display. 1 One passerby observed that “the display is sad, personal and emotionally jarring.” 2 During an interview, Carlos defined his memorial thusly: This is my pain. This is my loss . I start[ed] doing [this] for my own personal healing process . And it’s a way for me to share this grieving with the public, because many people live in their own bubbles, and they don’t care really about what’s going on outside their own bubbles, and I want them to feel what they see, what really happens every day . all over the country.” 3 For Carlos, the memorial both facilitates a “personal healing process”