Everyday Soldiering, Emotions, and the Iraq War: A Visual International Relations Analysis

Abstract Images play a key role in shaping public perceptions of war and offer a unique window into the politics of the everyday. This article addresses the underexplored engagement with images of soldiering in visual International Relations (IR), centering the everyday practices of military personnel during the Iraq War (2003-2012). Engaging a collection of photographs taken on US army bases, it develops an analysis grounded in the interpretative potential of images and informed by the critical military studies literature. Using the concept of emotional bundling, the article explores how emotions such as love, grief, care, and desire circulate within the institutional semi-public, semi-private spaces of barracks. It traces how these emotions shape relational dynamics, including the interplay between intimacy and institutional control, the navigation of boredom and desire, and the tensions between institutionalized rituals of grief and personal mourning. By foregrounding the everyday, the article contributes to visual IR an analysis that emphasizes the emotional and embodied dimensions of militarism and its broader political and societal consequences.