Demilitarizing the Future

Demilitarizing the Future draws from art, anthropology, and activism to investigate the entrenchment of militarism in everyday lives and to consider novel imaginaries of its dissolution. The pieces collected in this anthology track across military training camps in the United States, the tenements of Palestine, and other sites in the global networks of warfare and military preparedness to consider the pathways by which more equitable futures might be envisioned and sustained. Representing fields from anthropology to poetry and from literary studies to community organizing, the authors together weave a multidisciplinary collection of creative scholarship. Rather than presuming that the aftermath of war requires the reimposition of new military infrastructures, the collection speaks to the socially and artistically generative potentialities of military waste infrastructures as well as their enduring toxicities. Militarism and preparedness for war undergirds the infrastructure and design of everyday lives across the globe and its satellites, but the processes of demilitarization offer their own affordances. Within this collection, the authors broaden our understanding of militarization to examine its excesses and their repurposing toward demilitarized futures.

Darcie DeAngelo is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Canada. As an environmental and medical anthropologist trained in visual methods, her work engages with human–nonhuman relations such as the love between landmine detection rats and their handlers, the excitement of dogs and humans as they hunt for rats in cities, and the kinship of humans and their sourdough starters.

Rebecca Kastleman is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her research focuses on modern drama, theater, and performance and its intersections with social thought.

Joshua O Reno is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is the author of several books on subjects ranging from waste management, the military industrial complex, and White supremacy in the United States, to disability and non-verbal communication.

Leah Zani is a public anthropologist based in Oakland, California. She is the author of several books and articles that investigate the social impact of explosives.