Suffering Men of Empire

Abstract

This article considers two discursive sites where a potential new frontier of life and death, seen by many as symptomatic of Empire, is articulated. First this article looks at two international reports that articulate a new and pressing need to formulate and adopt a discourse and practice of human security as a direct response to the challenges of a globalized world order. The second discursive site is the often drawn upon image of the Iraqi man in pain. In Iraq specifically, the emphasis on men in pain is potentially revealing of the mechanisms of humanitarian war and its reworking of international conflict. This article suggests that in the spaces of exception created by this humanitarianism, subjects like these Iraqi men in pain figure as the prepolitical humanity seen to be owed protection not guaranteed in international law.