*/Culture, Theory and Critique: /*

*SPECIAL ISSUE ON MILITARIZATION & PLEASURE*

How do we enjoy our everyday militarization? This special issue will
investigate the production, experiences, and problems of the pleasure
that we derive from cultural products that uphold the values and logics
of militarization and securitization. We contend, first, that cultural
products and practices are actors embedded in global processes of empire
and capital. Second, we observe that recent civil unrest and state
responses to it have mademore people than ever aware that militarism
plays a normalized and pleasurable role in their everyday life. Apart
from the obvious extension of military culture and technology (i.e./Call
of Duty,/personal drones, camouflage fashion), this special issue will
explore less visible and non-obvious sites in which pleasure helps
condition subjects to become complicit with their own and others’
militarization and the wider systems that enable it.

In other words, how can we, and/can we/, laugh with Brooklyn 99 and
still attend Black Lives Matter rallies on the same day?

We plan to explore how pleasure is a channel through which
militarization occurs in the rhythms and rituals of everyday life,
including consumption, epistemologies and reasonings, desires,
aesthetics, and more. This collection of essays will reflect on how
militarization and pleasure queer and/or reinforce one another without
seeking to resolve inherent contradictions or rationalize the messy
affects of pleasure; we want to get into the intractably contradictory
and complicit character of pleasure and explore potentialities for
resistance. What can we/do/with the contradictory pleasures we find in
militarized values, processes, and practices at work in our daily lives?

We ask whether and how we are surviving now inwhat Berlant (2011) calls
“crisis ordinary”and imagine what it might mean to flourish and find joy
amongst the “everywhere war” (Gregory 2011). This issue hopes to
contribute nuanced understandings of the pleasure-militarization
relationship, expand perceptions of militarized aesthetics, and theorize
new modes of immanent critique and resistance that allow for pleasure
without projecting fantasies of innocence or exceptionalism. We welcome
contradictions and disagreements within this dialogue as long as we
share the common aim to provide new theoretical vantage points on and
terminologies for pleasure as a social catalyst that motivates desire,
structures subjectivities, and obscures the militarization of the everyday.

Scholars from any humanities or social science discipline, especially
those engaged in interdisciplinary work, are encouraged to contribute
350-word abstracts with a short bio note
to*[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>***by*1st April 2022.*Authors
should expect a response by 1st May, and full articles will be due on
September 1st for publication in early 2023 (or earlier online). We
respect the unpredictable schedules and needs we all differently have
and will try to make accommodations where possible. Authors needing
extensions for the abstract and/or paper submission should contact the
editors at the email address above.

We expect articles to fall into the three categories. Suggestions for
papers could include but are not limited to:

1: What is Militarization to/in/with Pleasure Now?

   * Conceptualizations of the relationship between militarization and
     pleasure
   * Militarization with specific reference to pleasure & the ‘non-martial’
   * Methods and affirmations of knowing, discovery, & enquiry (e.g.
     ‘fake news’)
   * Confluence of identity politics and the relational roles of
     militarized subjects. How are subjects differently militarized due
     to race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.?

2: Immanent Critique: Implicated and Contradictory Subjects

   * Material cultures, food, domesticity, fashion, media/texts, & leisure
   * Everyday use of military medicine & diet and fitness practices
     (e.g., meal substitute drinks, ‘warrior fitness’)
   * Domesticized & democratized military technology (e.g., home
     surveillance tech, smartphones, Alexa)
   * Culture and aesthetics of and around sex and violence
   * Commodification of revolutionary aesthetics and language &
     performative activism

3: Policing Pleasure: Resistance, Unconscious and Conscious, to
Militarization

   * Mutual aid, grassroots activism, & forms of protest (e.g. carnival,
     drag, Rest for Resistance)
   * Contestatory/activist texts, media, practices, & social media tactics
   * Forms of critique (e.g., trolling, satire, stand up comedy, memes)
   * Fictional and fantasy worlds: superheroes, speculative, and other
     sci-fi/fantasy forms

Alex Adams is an independent scholar based in the UK. He has written
widely on securitization, torture, and drone warfare, and has published
three monographs:/Political Torture in Popular Culture/(Routledge,
2016),/How to Justify Torture/(Repeater, 2019), and/Death TV: Drone
Warfare in Contemporary Popular Culture/(Drone Wars UK, 2021). He is
currently working on/Godzilla: A Critical Demonology/, a critical work
on Godzilla. See his website atadamswriting.com<http://secure-web.cisco.com/15h0J2Y79xCaQXB_NmFJCGBSvXqaJnDIF23iNOqXhaesrUJaElmt2orcMuJYztA1R-mrIs4BAgq8gX75S58t_OaQLpOYMPrDCQSF7qdxeseSJsE-FKk7tPOitojkBWqJn92fwlctmTM167glIxxiswqnS-g3sUDn6wJWuhmJ27SZF-J-B8BqlysHLSYACJ_qHyU7Mo2M0r0WJgpXBrTKK4Sf92lOeTl5PoLRaTH637zFC6Y8Iw9LMfepTKj-Sry7Fx5zDsTTl5FvlAKVD5bHYvYRWp-pmcUNt7Cf4KCvDJfcCmqayWZd_J_6bDa0VlFRak6xIyjzRUglVn3UYM_gSFnlBK8ZchaZguWbqToO-wR5EA9dLWI1c_f0Qexg6LLvlD3x5vadpowpQbT44xyMvMpiwIIXmiqloSjjIFUgQgEdD9tNJZu6qg-FO0dJOKCrp6IDh3IfBcUESNcaZtLaB4w/http%3A%2F%2Fatadamswriting.com>
<http://secure-web.cisco.com/15h0J2Y79xCaQXB_NmFJCGBSvXqaJnDIF23iNOqXhaesrUJaElmt2orcMuJYztA1R-mrIs4BAgq8gX75S58t_OaQLpOYMPrDCQSF7qdxeseSJsE-FKk7tPOitojkBWqJn92fwlctmTM167glIxxiswqnS-g3sUDn6wJWuhmJ27SZF-J-B8BqlysHLSYACJ_qHyU7Mo2M0r0WJgpXBrTKK4Sf92lOeTl5PoLRaTH637zFC6Y8Iw9LMfepTKj-Sry7Fx5zDsTTl5FvlAKVD5bHYvYRWp-pmcUNt7Cf4KCvDJfcCmqayWZd_J_6bDa0VlFRak6xIyjzRUglVn3UYM_gSFnlBK8ZchaZguWbqToO-wR5EA9dLWI1c_f0Qexg6LLvlD3x5vadpowpQbT44xyMvMpiwIIXmiqloSjjIFUgQgEdD9tNJZu6qg-FO0dJOKCrp6IDh3IfBcUESNcaZtLaB4w/http%3A%2F%2Fatadamswriting.com> for more information.

Amy Gaeta is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Studies and Visual Cultures
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Amy arranges aspects of
disability studies and feminist technoscience studies to explore
21st-century human-technology relations. Her dissertation,/Drone Life: A
Feminist Crip Analysis of the Human/theorizes the drone as a prosthetic
that is altering the human condition against the backdrop of AI, mass
surveillance, automation, and endless war. Her scholarship has recently
been published in the/Journal of Visual Culture/and the forthcoming
edited collection/Drone Aesthetics/(Open Humanities Press).