ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses even during the Troubles, the state of exception was never monolithic, never absolute. It focuses on the narratives surrounding the political uses of dead bodies. The chapter suggests that dehumanising narratives and dehumanising political productions of dead bodies are implicated in and continue to be implicated in the ongoing replication of the brutal, tautological logic of the state of exception. There is a common Northern Irish acrid colloquialism for the state of political debate in Northern Ireland. The aesthetic of the VVW inscribes the traumatic experience of the Vietnam War as a traumatic experience that happened to Americans and American soldiers; this is a dubious and potentially offensive inscription. Peter Novick's acerbic look at Holocaust memory in the United States (US) argues that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum should be interpreted as part of an unfolding effort to present a particular political narrative of the Holocaust to a largely non-Jewish American audience.
