Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror

The first book project of this kind, Veteran Activism is an original piece of public-facing scholarship that is not only impeccably researched, theorized, and argued but also refreshingly interdisciplinary and accessibly written. Trailblazing in focus, approach, and conclusions, Armstrong brings rhetorical, critical-theoretical, and ethnographic methodologies to bear on the discourse of dissent permeating the fast-expanding body of work by post-9/11 American soldier-writers across a range of forms and media. * Christian Moraru, Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA * Written from the double perspective of someone with academic expertise who also worked as an American journalist embedded with Special Operations Forces in Iraq, M.C. Armstrong offers fascinating insights into how American military veterans came to reconceptualize ideas of patriotic duty and homeland after 9/11. Starting with the famous case of Edward Snowden but also ranging across fiction writers such as Elliot Ackerman and Kevin Powers, Armstrong provides a compelling account of how these ‘veteran-activists’ engaged with a new era of ‘disidentity politics,’ where the old markers of allegiance were not so conceptually secure. This provocative book should provide food for thought and controversy not only in academic circles but also the wider public sphere. * Paul Giles, Professor of English, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, and author of The Global Remapping of American Literature *