Full Description
In Chemical Heroes Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military's attempts to design performance enhancement technologies and create pharmacological "supersoldiers" capable of withstanding extreme trauma. Bickford traces the deep history of efforts to biologically fortify and extend the health and lethal power of soldiers from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, from early adoptions of mandatory immunizations to bio-protective gear, to the development and spread of new performance enhancing drugs during the global War on Terrorism. In his examination of government efforts to alter soldiers' bodies through new technologies, Bickford invites us to contemplate what constitutes heroism when armor becomes built in, wired in, and even edited into the molecular being of an American soldier. Lurking in the background and dark recesses of all US military enhancement research, Bickford demonstrates, is the desire to preserve US military and imperial power.
Contents
Terms and Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue: Supersoldier Bob Writes Home xvii
Introduction: Chemical Heroes 1
Part I. Thematic Framings
1. "Innovation at the Speed of Change": War, Anticipation, Imagination 37
2. The Superman Solution: The New Man, Superheroes, and the Supersoldier 56
3. Government (T)Issue: Military Medicine, Performance Enhancement, and the Biology of the Soldier 75
Part II. Early Imaginaries of the US Supersolder
4. "Science Will Modernize Him": The Soldier of the Futurearmy 103
5. "A Biological Armor for the Soldier": Idiophylaxis and the Self-Armoring Soldier 111
Part III. Imagining the Modern US Supersoldier
6. "The Force Is With You": An Army of One to the Future Force Warrior 147
7. Molecular Militarization: War, Drugs, and the Structures of Unfeeling 180
8. "Kill-Proofing the Soldier": Inner Armor, Environmental Threats, and the World as Battlefield 216
9. "Catastrophic Success": Back to the Futurarmy 239
10. Natural Cowards, Chemical Heroes 245
Works Cited 259
Index 285
