"Silent Global and Oppressive Local: Fetishization of the Disabled War Veterans in Iran through the Ideological Construction of 'Living Martyrs'"
As a multilingual postdoctoral researcher of migration studies, disability studies, and medical humanities at The Ohio State University, Sona Hill researches the living conditions of people who become disabled as a result of wars, incarceration, genocide, and political instability in the Middle East, namely Iran, Iraqi, and Syrian Kurdistan.
Her doctoral thesis, completed at the University of Toronto examined the imperialist social relations and nationalist political agenda that produce and sustain the survivors' disability, organized within the transnational context of war.
Her articles and book reviews have appeared, or are in press, at the Journal of Critical Educational Policy Studies, Canadian Women's Studies, a special issue of Canadian Journal of Disability Studiesentitled "Survivals, Ruptures, Resiliences," Critical Disability Discourse Journal, and Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly.
Hill is the Society for Disability Studies' 2019 recipient of the honorable mention for the prestigious award of Irving K. Zola Award for emerging scholars in disability studies.
Abstract
This paper explores the ways in which disability gets fetishized in the global context using the case study of disabled war veterans in Iran who were injured during the Iran-Iraq war.
Relying on a disability studies lens, Hill analyzes the ways in which the Iranian state after the Iran-Iraq war has "dealt" with its disabled veteran and civilian population. The paper argues that since the war ended in 1988, the Iranian state has engaged in what she calls "fetishizing" the disability of its injured population, both veterans and civilians, in several ideological ways.
Throughout this paper she indicates how the state has managed to use the disabled bodies of injured survivors as a way to guarantee its survival by portraying them as an ideological construct called "living martyrs," as opposed to disabled humans in need of physical and affective care.
Additionally, the paper discusses how the injured survivors' disability has too been fetishized in the global context during and after the war, as the world has remained silent in the face of violent chemical attacks on Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan.