Scott Beauchamp - Did You Kill Anyone?: Reunderstanding My Military Experience as a Critique of Modern Culture

Id like to thank everyone I had the honor of serving with, as well as the friends and family who read portions of this book in manuscript form. Your feedback was invaluable. I would specifically like to thank Glenn Rehn, Eduardo Duarte, Tyler Malone, Jacob Silverman, Corey Kloos and Michael Schapira for their support and encouragement through the writing process.

Contemporary culture has eliminated the concept and public figure of the intellectual. A cretinous anti-intellectualism presides, cheer-led by hacks in the pay of multinational corporations who reassure their bored readers that there is no need to rouse themselves from their stupor. Zer0 Books knows that another kind of discourse intellectual without being academic, popular without being populist is not only possible: it is already flourishing. Zer0 is convinced that in the unthinking, blandly consensual culture in which we live, critical and engaged theoretical reflection is more important than ever before. If you have enjoyed this book, why not tell other readers by posting a review on your preferred book site. Recent bestsellers from Zero Books are:

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You might think after reading this book that I miss being in the Army. I dont. I wasnt a very good soldier, to be honest. I think I was fine in a combat zone, but back in the barracks I was a mess. Im not a natural runner. I cant tie knots very well. Im not a great mechanic and I have an ambivalent relationship with authority. But all the things that I discuss in this book, the boredom, hierarchy, ritual, smoking, honor, etc. I miss all of these things. Life suffers without them, or their equivalent, present in some form. And any political program that ignores or devalues them renders itself incomplete.

Hierarchy? Authority? Honor? Im well aware how, standing alone and without context, these terms come off as reactionary shibboleths. Especially in our current political climate, to cop an oft-used phrase. But I dont believe any au currant political perspective has a monopoly on them. Re-understood, recontextualized within a progressive, Marxist, Left Christian or even an Anarchist agenda, these terms could refer instead to the fruits of collective political action rather than dead weights. Specters from a regressive past. Perhaps the only agenda one needs in order to appreciate them is a culturally Humanist one. In other words, theres still opportunity to reject them outright for political reasons, so long as that rejection is paired with an awareness of the full scope of whats actually being dismissed.

My own goals in writing this are decidedly apolitical, a piece with the same spirit with which Charles Pguy wrote that The revolution will be a moral revolution or it will not be a revolution at all. Of course, political claims are made in the process. A skepticism with capitalism. A questioning of materialism in its crudest forms. A longing for values which gesture toward transcendence. But I hope theres enough psychology, metaphysics, and poetics in the book (I scrupulously avoid calling it a text) to keep it from being mistaken for a political tract. At root, this is my attempt to make sense of myself. To give my experiences form and logical coherence.

If theres any personal tragedy to this tale its that I had to join the Army to experience these things. After coming to know their existential value first hand, our contemporary world feels doubly empty being denuded of them.

As time has passed, people ask me less and less about my intentions in joining the Army. People also thank me less for my service. Its a mixed blessing, because now I think that if someone asked me why Id joined up I might finally be able to begin to articulate an answer.

Scott Beauchamp is a writer who lives in Maine. His previous work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, The Atlantic Monthly, Bookforum and American Affairs, among other places.

Agamben, Giorgio. The Sacrament of Language: An Archeology of the Oath. Trans. Adam Kostko. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Barthelme, Donald. The Dead Father. New York: FSG Classics, 2004.

Bly, Robert. The Sibling Society: An Impassioned Call for the Rediscovery of Adulthood. New York: Vintage, 1997.