Toxic violence: The politics of militarized toxicity in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

US-led military forces have repeatedly used toxic munitions and everyday military practices in Iraq and Afghanistan, introducing known carcinogens, teratogens, and genotoxins into the environment without adequate transparency or remediation. Counter to dominant frames problematizing militarized toxicities as merely medical-epidemiological or environmental, I develop the concept of toxic violence to name state violence which employs or produces toxic exposures as weaponry, tactic, or by-product. I analyze the ways in which toxic violence is produced by an uneven field of intentionality, and structured by systemic political and economic factors. I also address the persistent evidentiary dynamics of research and discourse on its health effects. Tracing the multiple ways it defies conventional frames for assessing damage, I analyze how toxic violence constitutes an ongoing, self-replicative form of harm, and press critical questions toward refiguring accountability for its unfolding aftermaths.