Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves

One day at a beach Kathleen Barry witnessed an accidental death. Seeing how empathy drew together the bystanders, strangers until that moment, in shared human consciousness, she asked, Why do we value human lives in everyday moments but accept the killing in war as inevitable? In Unmaking War, Remaking Men, she explores soldiers’ experiences through a politics of empathy. By revealing how men’s lives are made expendable for combat, she shows how military training drives to them kill without thinking and without remorse, only to suffer both trauma and loss of their own souls. With the politics of empathy, she sheds new light on the experiences of those who are invaded and occupied and shows how resistance rises among them.