War After Death

<p><em>War after Death</em> considers forms of violence that regularly occur in actual wars but do not often factor into the stories we tell about war which revolve invariably around killing and death.</p><p>Recent history demonstrates that body counts are more necessary than ever but the fact remains that war and death is only part of the story--an essential but ultimately subordinate part. Beyond killing there is no war without attacks upon the built environment ecosystems personal property artworks archives and intangible traditions.</p><p>Destructive as it may be such violence is difficult to classify because it does not pose a grave threat to human lives. Nonetheless the book argues that destruction of the nonhuman or nonliving is a constitutive dimension of all violence--especially forms of extreme violence against the living such as torture and rape; and it examines how the language and practice of war are transformed when this dimension is taken into account.</p><p>Finally <em>War after Death</em> offers a rethinking of psychoanalytic approaches to war and the theory of the death drive that underlies them.</p>