Why is the US so much more dangerous than Europe, despite similar levels of education and socioeconomic development? Many answers are simultaneously correct: greater inequality, a history of slavery, genocide, and racial violence, a two-party system, and so forth. This talk examines the linkage between weapons, masculinity, and contemporary US political identities, using visual images to engage the audience in thinking together about how the US approach to weapons impacts other parts of the world.

This talk emerges from an ongoing multi-year research project into the transformation of US military institutions and culture since the Vietnam War. My goal in the book is to explain cultural and societal acceptance of permanent, unwinnable wars (on Drugs, Terrorism, etc.), and I do so by tracing how the military and intelligence agencies privatized dangerous and illegal missions just as Hollywood became obsessed with apparently invincible vigilantes and one-man-spy-agencies. This talk is thus part of a bigger effort to trace the origins of what I call “tactical fetishism” or “commando fetishism.”

Dr. Jesse Crane-Seeber holds a BA in “Resisting Hegemony,” a major of his own design, from Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY, USA), and a PhD in International Relations from American University (Washington, DC, USA). He has previously served as a visiting researcher at King’s College London War Studies (UK), and taught at the University of the District of Columbia (DC, USA), North Carolina State University (USA), and the University of Bremen (Germany).

His research has covered the US military as a sociological worksite, as an occupying force in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a symbolic cornerstone of masculinity in militarizing cultures, and a productive site of desire. His recent work has contributed to critical security studies, particularly in theorizing embodiment and desire in militarized cultures and institutions. He is currently completing his book, Fetishizing the Tactical, which traces the history and diffusion of de-politicized tactical training from the US military into US policing, society, and around the world. His goal is to explain the sociocultural basis of permanent unwinnable wars and their racialized and gendered effects.