ABSTRACT
Without the elements of spectacle provided by stage performers, photographers, filmmakers, and news organizations, it is unlikely that the protocols of science themselves would have brought shellshock, PTSD, TBI, moral injury, or even Agent Orange poisoning into our conversation. Before getting to the role of spectacle in the making of war-trauma diagnoses, three other dimensions of that relationship are considered. Viewed as the authors do, war becomes the spectacle-of-all-spectacles that makes it the primogenitor of, not only all else in twining of spectacle and war trauma, but the origins in ancient cultures of the very notion of spectacle as we think of it today. It is an approach that also considers the less-than-pure distinction between science and spectacle certainly less pure than the mental health establishment would have us believe. It is an approach in which we see how war-trauma representations get twisted into pro-war propaganda that turns wounded veterans themselves into spectacles that are used to incite more war.
