Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming
Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body
by Lyle Jeremy Rubin
English | 2022 | ISBN: 1645037096 | 305 pages | True EPUB | 6.99 MB
by Lyle Jeremy Rubin
English | 2022 | ISBN: 1645037096 | 305 pages | True EPUB | 6.99 MB
An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone
When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.
In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of…