William Paul Downey

My research investigates the relations between state violence and socio-political reorganization in the contemporary United States. By focusing on a unit of Marine Corps veterans that I twice deployed to Southern Afghanistan with ten years ago, my research attempts to analyze the ways in which a military body, the literal Corps, socially metabolizes into the broader US body politic. By paying special attention to the body, personhood, and memory throughout these military afterlives, I hope to contribute a closer look at how enlisted personnel contribute to ongoing processes of militarization, or demilitarization, of US civil society.