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Anomaly: on Teratogenic Violence in Iraq
Abstract
After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, doctors in Fallujah noticed a higher rate of unusual congenital anomalies. To the community, the change was obvious and obviously linked to the war’s environmental impact. On the one hand, anomaly itself is not anomalous, but in fact the very mechanism by which species, ecologies, and beings sustain continuity amidst changing conditions. On the other hand, anomaly marks newness and difference that can signal harm and alarm in ecosystems under stress. In this case, the sudden occurrence of anomalous bodies signaled teratogenic violence pertinent to environmental justice campaigns. Yet scientific and legal individuation makes it difficult to prove that such a phenomenon was caused by an event that could mark a before and after (in this case, war). But in the longer wake of military violence in Fallujah, another problem with proof emerged: war, rather than an anomalous event itself, became a continuity. That which was a useful marker of anomalous time or possible cause became a chronic condition. This talk explores one core conceptual question, relevant to those thinking forensically about long-dure phenomena like climate change, corporate pollution, or global militarism: what is the role of anomaly in helping us to make meaning of a phenomenon or to prove an injustice? And what happens when the exception becomes the rule, when anomaly drops out of our cognitive toolkit?
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Iraq
Sub Area
Health