Revealed in the Wound: Medical Care and the Ecologies of War in Post-Occupation Iraq
Omar Dewachi
Abstract
Decades of war and western interventions in Iraq have produced toxic legacies of wounding and affliction that have redefined geographies and everyday experiences of vulnerability and care. Building on what I call anthropology of wounding, I explore a number of methodological insights related to conducting ethnographic research on war injury across conflict landscapes in the Middle East. Taking the “wound” as a method, I explore what is “revealed” in such wounds as they map the incongruent trajectories, terrains and relations of vulnerability and care in everyday life. Anchoring my analysis in a deeper understanding of the changing ecologies of war, I show how an anthropology of wounding further unravels the biosocial relations of distress and care, and provides a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of war and the body, as well as the inscription of a history of war in the molecular and genetic makeup of the environment.