This lecture draws on two recent moments in the “War on Terror” — the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and a US Military study of “pedophilia” in Afghanistan — to analyze the inextricability of masculinity and militarism and the centrality of race and sexuality in nationalist projects of war and violence. The lecture suggests, in particular, that anxieties about the stability of hegemonic forms of white, “patriotic” American masculinity are increasingly assuaged through the identification — and dehumanization — of improperly sexed/gendered Muslim men.
