Empty Metal Jacket: the Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine Sandra Lee Trappen The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1581 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] EMPTY METAL JACKET: THE BIOPOLITICAL ECONOMY OF WAR AND MEDICINE by Sandra Trappen A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 © 2016 SANDRA L. TRAPPEN All Rights Reserved ii Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine A Case Study By Sandra L. Trappen This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________ _________________________________ Date Patricia Clough Chair of Examining Committee _______________________ _________________________________ Date Philip Kasinitz Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Lynn Chancer Stanley Aronowitz Jackie Orr David Serlin THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................ i Section One: Introduction & Literature CHAPTER I – Introduction ............................................................................1 Overview Previous Research Recovering the Body The Techno-Science of War What is War? Why Soldiers? War & Affect CHAPTER II: Methods .................................................................................42 Research Purpose & Questions Key Concepts Theory and Methods Outline Contribution CHAPTER III: The Problem of War.........................................................103 Sociology Anthropology Military and Security Studies The Human Terrain System The Academy As A War Zone Summary CHAPTER IV: The Problem of the Body………………………………143 Sociology & Anthropology Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Cultural Studies Science, Technology, and Disability Studies iv Page Section Two: The Iron Cage of Medicine CHAPTER V: 19th Century Wars – Case Illustration One .....................175 History: Beginnings, Endings, Causes, Effects Combat Casualties & Statistics Medical Social Organization Battlefield Strategy, Tactics, and Weaponry Analysis CHAPTER VI: 20th Century Wars – Case Illustration Two ....................253 History: Beginnings, Endings, Causes, Effects Combat Casualties & Statistics Medical Social Organization Battlefield Strategy, Tactics, and Weaponry Analysis Coda: Conclusions & Theoretical Implications .........................................339 Bibliography ...................................................................................................373 v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Page Table 1 Distribution of Active-Duty Enlisted Women and Men in the U.S. Military in 2010, by Race and Ethnicity. …………………………………………………..……18 Table 2 U.S. Casualties in War, from the Revolutionary War to Iraq. ....................................................................................32 Figure 1 U.S. Coast Survey Map of 1861 ...........................................226 Figure 2 Mortality rates for black men in the United States..............................................................................231 Figure 3 Mortality rates for white men in the United States………………………………………………….232 vi ABSTRACT Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine: A Case Study By Sandra L. Trappen Advisor: Patricia Clough Empty Metal Jacket: The Biopolitical Economy of War and Medicine undertakes study of how global conflict and violence shape the entire range of social production, from commodities and culture to social goods and social theory. The research presented in this work draws from cutting- edge theories in body and science studies, in addition to theories of affect and biopolitics to address how war became a problem solving paradigm in medicine. Combat casualties are shown to serve as a material nexus for medical knowledge production. Although the focus here is on medicine and medical innovation in particular, these developments are connected to developments in military science and battlefield strategy and tactics, and so they illustrate how violence organize knowledge across different realms of scientific endeavor. This research situates important developments in medicine within a historical, economic, and political context to show how war and military ideas not only were extended into the social spaces of everyday life, they advanced in such a way as to help determine the conditions of possibility for life, living, and what it means to be human. In thinking through this multi-faceted configuration, I employ Foucauldian genealogical methods, covert ethnographic methods, and archival/historical interpretive methods to assemble case data that allow me to look at war’s impact on the social organization of medicine. Case findings illustrate a "non•linear history" that documents war's influence on medical innovation. I highlight these developments, but go one step further: I question the centrality of methodological positivism to research methods in the social sciences, which I argue are also a product of war and global conflict. Collectively, the findings support the claim that wounded soldiers have throughout history been used as medical test subjects to facilitate practice innovation and progress. Analysis shows how wounded bodies are produced within a circulating biopolitical economy of relations, where the radical undoing of the body forms the basis of a medical governance of control. This work makes a contribution to theorizing violence and political economy, as it calls attention to the instrumental role played by wounded soldiers to life-saving medical advance; it suggests there is a need to re-think the transcendence of medicine through war and capitalism: wars make human subjects out of soldiers, who cannot ethically consent to medical procedures any more than medicine can ethically be practiced when its advance depends on violence. Key words: Biomedicine, Militarization, Affect, Foucault, Biopolitics, Bodies, Embodiment, Civil War, World War One, World War Two, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Human Terrain System, Military Anthropology, Epistemology, Trauma, War, Violence. vii Acknowledgments First, I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my committee, who made significant contributions to this study. The guidance and counsel provided by Dr. Patricia Clough, Dr. Lynn Chancer, Dr. Stanley Aronowitz, Dr. Jackie Orr, and Dr. David Serlin was extremely valuable and helped contribute to my development as a sociologist. Dr. Jennifer Wynn, likewise, helped me to get through my last summer as a Ph.D. candidate by providing opportunities to work, laugh, and generally vent about the embodied violence of the dissertation process. I also want to thank my friends and family for their loyal support and assistance throughout this research endeavor. For her unconditional support, numerous sacrifices, and boundless patience, I am especially grateful to my mother, Carol Trappen. Were it not for her financial support that helped overcome institutional obstacles, I would not have been able to complete this project. viii Section One: Introduction & Literature CHAPTER I Introduction “Nothing [after the war] remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body.” Such are the words of Walter Benjamin, whose oft quoted passage calls attention to the problem of the body in connection with war.1 This research begins and ends with the body; it will consider particular bodies in addition to bodies in general that become caught up in the torrents of violence Benjamin describes. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once declared “the United States is the greatest purveyor of war and violence in the world today.”2 Though in this case their individual histories and stories may be different, both men speak to the problem of war and violence in their time. The Body is the Frontline Modern armies bear little resemblance to the armies of the past. Contemporary wars and the soldiers that fight them have evolved, even as they continue to inspire nostalgia for a past that still reverberates in our present. One aim this research takes is to investigate the role that violence plays in mapping the human terrain of war. The human body remains a perennial if not 1 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations. New York: Shocken Books, 2007, p.84. 2 On April 4, 1968, exactly one year before he was assassinated outside his hotel room, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King appeared at Riverside Church in New York City, where he outlined his views in opposition to the Vietnam War. It would become known as his "Beyond Vietnam" address. Shortly thereafter, in another speech, he would call the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In that speech, King made an important connection between the war and violence in Vietnam and the struggle that he and others were waging within the Civil Rights