Support and the Making of Political Community

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter plays out the implications of support as the new service for political community. It argues masculinized/ing martial solidarity (a) bounds the liberal polity, determining who is in and (b) redeems the normative status of the liberal polity in the process, recovering from the dissonance of the fracturing martial contract. The chapter then examines the implications of supporting the troops for liberal wars. The gendered, political obligation of solidarity transcends the territorial boundaries of the nation-state. Support can be projected or imposed as a continuity of affinity and/or imperialism. The chapter reads transnational alliance politics among the West as expressing not only liberal but also, neo-colonial, White solidarity in the global war on terror. For people racialized as “Other,” support is expected, and required, to offset a pre-existing presumption of enmity and threat. Even actual military service, however, is not sufficient for the recognition of rights and political belonging.