College Literature

Abstract:

At virtually the same moment that contemporary critics have recently turned to examining the ever-more visible genres of literary nonfiction, a number of journalistic texts have begun to portray American veterans returning from the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan—and with that, to depicting the socalled "hidden wounds" war veterans often bring home. This essay examines perhaps the most prominent of these texts, David Finkel's Thank You for Your Service (2013). Finkel's book follows a group of veterans of the Iraq war as they return to their home lives in and around Fort Riley, Kansas. Finkel's techniques—exemplifying a hybridized, journalistic adaptation of Anglo-American modernism—are examined in light of ongoing controversies over Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and the questions raised across the disciplines about whether the diagnosis has eclipsed fuller discussions of what are called "moral injuries," inner conflicts resulting from the ethical and political dimensions of war. Following these recently raised questions, it is argued here that hidden wounds often carry the contradictions of "domestic" ideology already present in US counterinsurgency doctrine—contradictions that resurface in Finkel's depictions of the return to the homeland. In closing, the gendered, national framing of Finkel's book is interrogated, as well as the limitations in the concept of moral injury itself.