From subjects to objects: honor flights and US ontological insecurity

Abstract

Following the 2004 establishment of the World War II memorial in Washington DC, itself a product of the collective re-commemoration of the so-called ‘Greatest Generation’ of WWII veterans in the US, nonprofit organizations began the practice of ‘Honor flights’. These flights transported US veterans of the Second World War to Washington DC to visit that memorial and other commemorative sites, meet with Congressional members, and return to their local airports to great fanfare and celebration. The practice has evolved to incorporate Korean War and now Vietnam War veterans. As honor flights include much more than the veterans themselves, and as it has become an affectively charged festival for local communities to ‘honor’ their veterans during periods of unresolved wartimes, I articulate the Honor Flight as a treatment for – but also a symptom of – US ontological insecurity in the 21st Century. Honor flights are celebratory, judgmental, and political micro-practices that reflect and reproduce US militarism in ways that will likely outlast the wartimes of the 21st century United States. Along with other micro-practices of US ontological (in)security, Honor Flights threaten to destabilize the politics of military intervention hereafter, and encourage the extension of or inauguration of new times of war.