Inherently Governmental: Private Military Contracting and U.S. Empire in the Twenty-First Century
Open AccessAn interdisciplinary project working at the intersections of history, cultural studies, and critical theory, “Inherently Governmental” analyzes PMCs as both under-studied brokers of U.S. empire and opaque figures onto which public anxieties around war and empire were displaced. It traces problematizing discourses and depictions of PMCs in U.S. political culture during the Bush and Obama administrations, evaluating the ways in which networks of journalists, activists, and government officials processed crises of state through the construct of the controversial PMC. Further, it theorizes private contracting as a form of corporate governance at odds with traditional liberal-democratic governance in the post-9/11 U.S. security state, as well as its client states in Iraq and Afghanistan. Weaving together news media, journalist accounts, blogs, films, legal cases, Congressional hearings, and governmental reports, the project demonstrates how corporations in the twenty-first century underwrite and undertake the work of empire in an ostensibly post-imperial age.
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