We Could Be Heroes: Queering Perspectives in Contemporary Fictions of War

Clark offers a discussion of the recent cultural resurgence in fictionalized accounts of the Iraq conflict as a means to redress the previous erasure of human experiences of military operations conducted by the United States. By seeking to present a first-hand account of events in areas like Iraq, Clark argues that these texts ostensibly suggest a desire to destabilize the correlation between ideologies of nation-state and individual experiences of war. Through an examination of Roy Scranton’s novel War Porn and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer, Clark points toward a queer archive that works to override perspectives through a more direct viewability—and knowability—of the Iraqi people.