Post-9/11 American War Fiction in Dialogue with Official-Media Discourse (Doctoral Dissertation, Duquesne University)
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Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 1-1-2017 Reconstructing the War in Iraq: Post-9/11 American War Fiction in Dialogue with Official- Media Discourse Ashley Kunsa Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Kunsa, A. (2017). Reconstructing the War in Iraq: Post-9/11 American War Fiction in Dialogue with Official-Media Discourse (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/134 This One-year Embargo is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RECONSTRUCTING THE WAR IN IRAQ: POST-9/11 AMERICAN WAR FICTION IN DIALOGUE WITH OFFICIAL-MEDIA DISCOURSE A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Ashley Kunsa May 2017 Copyright by Ashley Kunsa 2017 RECONSTRUCTING THE WAR IN IRAQ: POST-9/11 AMERICAN WAR FICTION IN DIALOGUE WITH OFFICIAL-MEDIA DISCOURSE By Ashley Kunsa Approved April 11, 2017 ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. Magali Michael Dr. Faith Barrett Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ Dr. Milton Bates Professor Emeritus Marquette University (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dr. Greg Barnhisel Dean, McAnulty Graduate School of Chair, Department of English Liberal Arts Professor of English Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT RECONSTRUCTING THE WAR IN IRAQ: POST-9/11 AMERICAN WAR FICTION IN DIALOGUE WITH OFFICIAL-MEDIA DISCOURSE By Ashley Kunsa May 2017 Dissertation supervised by Dr. Magali Michael This project examines American-authored Iraq War fiction within the context of public discourse. Given that modern, industrialized warfare is as much created by and through official-media discourse as represented by it, fictional accounts of Iraq exist not outside or separate from this discourse but rather in a dynamic, continually evolving relationship with it. The three texts explored in this study—Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk (2012), David Abrams’ Fobbit (2012), and Phil Klay’s Redeployment (2014)—thus do more than merely represent the war experience: operating always in conversation with how the war has been constructed, the novels and stories challenge what has and has not been made visible by those in power and how it has been rendered visible or invisible. At the same time, the texts perform a crucial intervention into the communication context, inhibiting the “discursive closure” threatened by the iv unchecked perpetuation of prominent Iraq War narratives.1At times directly and at others obliquely, the fictional narratives engage, interrogate, and critique official-media constructions of the Iraq War, thus challenging what has been accepted by the majority of American society as the reality of the conflict. By revising, repurposing, and undermining the vocabulary, structure, tropes, and techniques of dominant Iraq War discourse, the novels and stories I address in the following chapters alter the discursive landscape as they interact with it. Ultimately, these texts not only lay bare the construction of war-as- narrative but also make plain the lie that is the tidy, official version of the Iraq War, and their adaptations, both direct and indirect, of Vietnam War discourse suggest the contingent nature of all war narratives and the potential of fiction to serve as a positive intervening force in the cultural and political realities of the contemporary moment. 1 Stanley Deetz, Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1992), 188. v DEDICATION For Brad and Toby—always. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks go to my director and the members of my committee, who brought nuance to the ideas of this project and asked the difficult questions that compelled me to think more deeply: Magali Michael, Faith Barrett, and Milton Bates. I am also grateful to the English Department at Duquesne University, as well as the McAnulty Graduate School of Liberal Arts, for all the funding support they provided me as I worked on this dissertation. Thanks to Harlan Handler, without whom this project would not have made it past the halfway point. And, of course, I am grateful to my family: my mother, who is surely the reason I love the English language; my son Toby, who missed out on more time with me than he should have while I worked on this project; and Brad, my husband, who has been endlessly patient and supportive. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Dedication .......................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii Introduction .........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Official-Media Construction of the 2003 Iraq War..........................................17 The Not-So-Independent Press .....................................................................................19 Constructing the Iraq War in the Press ........................................................................22 Dominant American Narratives of the Iraq War ..........................................................27 Tactics for Crafting the “Right” Story .........................................................................43 Chapter 2: War Stories, Commodity Patriotism, and Pop Culture Spectacle in Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk ...........................................................63 Memory, Point of View, and Narrative Fragmentation: The Battle at Al-Ansakar Canal........................................................................................................69 Patriotism Meets Big Business Meets Conservative Christianity: Linguistic Dysfunction in Wartime America ................................................................................87 The Reality of Embedded Reporting: Just Like a Movie, Only More So ......................99 Spectacle, Patriotism, and Pop Culture at Texas Stadium .........................................108 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................119 Chapter 3: Constructing a War Fit for Public Consumption in David Abrams’s Fobbit .............................................................................................................................124 Satire and the Two-Thousandth Death: The Vietnam War’s Body Count Repurposed for the Contemporary Era.....................................................................127 Fashioning a More Palatable, Appealing War: The Role of Non-Literary Materials ...................................................................................................................137 viii Revision Makes Perfect: Genre-Switching, Constructing Death, and the Quest for a Better Story ............................................................................................157 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................175 Chapter 4: A Whole Nation’s War, a Whole Nation’s Injury: Phil Klay’s Redeployment .................................................................................................................181 The Shape of a Nationwide Injury: Narrative Structure .............................................185 Talking the Talk: Bridging the Gap in “OIF” ............................................................198 First-person Shooters: How to Tell a True War Story, According to a Dozen Different Guys ...........................................................................................................205 Who Is the Enemy?: Humanizing the Other and Resisting Rhetorical Binaries ........222 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................235 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................245 ix INTRODUCTION This project examines the spate of American-authored fictional texts engaging with the 2003 war in Iraq that has been published to considerable attention from book reviewers, bloggers, and readers following the official withdrawal of the United States military from Iraq on December 13, 2011.1 This influx of novels and short stories comes after a relative dearth during the previous eight years of serious fiction addressing the war, its combatants, and its impact on the home front.2 Authored by veterans and non-veterans, men and women, established and first- time writers, these post-war works approach the conflict in Iraq from a variety of angles. Some examine, from the point of view of the deployed soldier,3 the theater