This session will explore the capacity and limits of the concept of moral injury to describe particular kinds of harm suffered in wartime and in situations of racist discrimination and violence. Papers offer examinations of the language and concepts that undergird understandings of violence, guilt and morally injurious circumstances in the contexts of Anti-Asian hatred in the US during the COVID pandemic and its aftermath, the Colombian civil war, and the current US defense posture and its philosophical frameworks.
Focusing on the testimonies and movements that emerged during the surge of anti-Asian racism and hate during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper will explore the causes and manifestations of moral injury among Asian Americans in the United States, through the lens of gendered, ageist, and xenophobic violence against individuals and communities. Reflecting on Asian Americans’ processes of reclaiming moral virtues, taking collective action, and making meaning, we will identify lessons on social healing, noting the challenges and possibilities of restorative justice approaches in processing moral injury and building communal resilience.
This paper will examine the analysis of paramilitary perpetrators’ narratives concerning their involvement in mass crimes during the Colombian civil war, focusing on individuals who do not exhibit typical symptoms of moral injury like remorse or guilt. Through the theoretical frameworks of normalization of evil and decolonial theory, I will explore these narratives. Divided into three parts, the paper will first discuss Carlos Mauricio García Fernández's book, "No divulgar hasta que los implicados estén muertos," detailing the experiences of a former commander of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC, whose behavior diverges from traditional perceptions of moral injury. Subsequently, I will delve into the concept of normalization of evil, juxtaposed with decolonial theory, to elucidate how assimilation to oppressive structures enabled perpetrators' involvement in heinous acts. Finally, I will explore potential ethical frameworks that liberation theology can offer to address these narratives.
Neither of the two primary ethical traditions that address U.S. military force—pacifism and just war reasoning—frame their critiques in terms of violence, instead using the category of “war.” Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on nonviolence, I suggest that increased attention to the violence of war grounds a critical perspective that centers the human beings who suffer the harms and devastation wrought by war. Butler’s nonviolence is grounded in a commitment to the equal grievability of all human beings. The testimonies of servicemembers who have suffered moral injury after participating in war demonstrate how the embodied, relational experience of grief can generate a new, human-centered critical discourse on the violence of war.