Overview
Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror is the first study of the literature of dissent that has emerged from the veterans of the global War on Terror. Spencer Ackerman's Reign of Terror stated that “The most impactful activism against the War on Terror came from within the Security State itself . . . low ranking soldiers and intelligence contractors whose exposure to the war prompted them to expose it to the world.” Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror examines this subculture of veterans whose stories have dramatically shifted the conversation about literature and activism. Author M. C. Armstrong introduces and explores America’s post-9/11 soldier-writers, a community that challenges pivotal contemporary assumptions about allegiance, democracy, geography, solidarity, and national identity. Chapters are organized around a triad of core concepts–parrhesia, cosmopolitanism, and dissensus–and discuss authors including Elliot Ackerman, Kristin Beck, Joseph Hickman, Phil Klay, Kevin Powers, and Edward Snowden. Armstrong argues that this scene represents a literary movement and perhaps the most significant literary community since the Beat Generation, and Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror reads the work of these writers as the loci of a “dissenting” overhaul of the official narratives and rhetorical maps that chart the United States’ Global War on Terror.
Full Product Details
Author: Dr. M. C. Armstrong (North Carolina A&T State University, USA)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.454kg
ISBN: 9798765112854
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 19 February 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: Manufactured on demand
Reviews
""The first book project of this kind, Veteran Activism is an original piece of public-facing scholarship that is not only impeccably researched, theorized, and argued but also refreshingly interdisciplinary and accessibly written. Trailblazing in focus, approach, and conclusions, Armstrong brings rhetorical, critical-theoretical, and ethnographic methodologies to bear on the discourse of dissent permeating the fast-expanding body of work by post-9/11 American soldier-writers across a range of forms and media."" --Christian Moraru, Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA ""Written from the double perspective of someone with academic expertise who also worked as an American journalist embedded with Special Operations Forces in Iraq, M.C. Armstrong offers fascinating insights into how American military veterans came to reconceptualize ideas of patriotic duty and homeland after 9/11. Starting with the famous case of Edward Snowden but also ranging across fiction writers such as Elliot Ackerman and Kevin Powers, Armstrong provides a compelling account of how these 'veteran-activists' engaged with a new era of 'disidentity politics, ' where the old markers of allegiance were not so conceptually secure. This provocative book should provide food for thought and controversy not only in academic circles but also the wider public sphere."" --Paul Giles, Professor of English, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, and author of The Global Remapping of American Literature
The first book project of this kind, Veteran Activism is an original piece of public-facing scholarship that is not only impeccably researched, theorized, and argued but also refreshingly interdisciplinary and accessibly written. Trailblazing in focus, approach, and conclusions, Armstrong brings rhetorical, critical-theoretical, and ethnographic methodologies to bear on the discourse of dissent permeating the fast-expanding body of work by post-9/11 American soldier-writers across a range of forms and media. * Christian Moraru, Class of 1949 Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA * Written from the double perspective of someone with academic expertise who also worked as an American journalist embedded with Special Operations Forces in Iraq, M.C. Armstrong offers fascinating insights into how American military veterans came to reconceptualize ideas of patriotic duty and homeland after 9/11. Starting with the famous case of Edward Snowden but also ranging across fiction writers such as Elliot Ackerman and Kevin Powers, Armstrong provides a compelling account of how these ‘veteran-activists’ engaged with a new era of ‘disidentity politics,’ where the old markers of allegiance were not so conceptually secure. This provocative book should provide food for thought and controversy not only in academic circles but also the wider public sphere. * Paul Giles, Professor of English, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, and author of The Global Remapping of American Literature *
Author Information
M. C. Armstrong is Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina A&T State University, USA, and is the author of The Mysteries of Haditha (2020), one of the “Best Books of 2020” (The Brooklyn Rail). Armstrong embedded with Joint Special Operations Forces in Al Anbar Province, Iraq in 2008, and has published extensively on the Iraq War through The Winchester Star. He is the winner of a Pushcart Prize, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, and other journals and anthologies.
