The Uncanny Magic of Bomb Mail: Cosmopolitan Militarism and the Compulsion to Write on Munitions

Abstract This paper analyzes the practice of writing inscriptions on munitions, termed “bomb mail,” with a focus on inscriptions on artillery shells used in the Ukraine–Russia conflict and in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. To better understand bomb mail’s enigmatic appeal, I examine its uncanny and quasi-magical affordances. First, through the medium of writing, bomb mail offers the inscriber a form of distributed personhood that extends into the weapon. Second, in bomb mail, violence becomes a vehicle for augmenting verbal meaning, while the words’ meanings are inseparable from the violence itself. This intertwining may contribute to the impression that bomb mail possesses a kind of spell-casting power. Third, bomb mail gives rise to an uncanny enemy other, a target shaped by an uneasy simultaneity of humanizing and dehumanizing stances. Working in tandem, these three qualities make bomb mail compelling and encourage cosmopolitan militarism among civilians, while embodying a form of political communication that shuts dialogue down altogether.