“What the World Looks Like”: On Banality and Spectacle

Abstract

We live in what is widely described as an age of perpetual, global war: a condition of war whose spatial extension spans the surface of the planet, the height of its airspace, and the depth of its oceans, and whose time envisages no end. 1 Bodies and environments become incidental victims in the search for targets. War noise-barely heard at a distance by some, not heard at all by others, or perhaps made by the pounding of one's own skull for those considered targets-becomes a chronic drone. As with earlier imperial and proxy wars, contemporary war lulls some into acting as though they do not live in wartime while compelling others to confront their everyday vulnerability every day. If contemporary war has an antonym, it is neither "peace" nor "norm."

The lived body, everyday and generative powers of war: toward an embodied ontology of war as experience

“… 98 In its original meaning, the ‘banal’ refers to compulsory feudal service indicating a deep-seated relationship between military obligations and everyday life in feudalism (see MacPhee and Naimou 2016, 4).…”