Main description:

This book brings together leading interdisciplinary scholars to broaden and deepen the conversation about moral injury. In original essays, the contributors present new research to show how the humanities are crucial for understanding the expressions, meaning, and significance of moral injury.

Moral injury is the disorientation we suffer when we are complicit in some moral transgression. Most existing work addresses moral injury from a clinical or neuroscientific perspective. The essays in this volume show how the humanities are crucial for understanding the meaning and significance of moral injury, as well as suggesting how to grapple with its lived challenges. The chapters address the conceptual, sociological, historical, and ritualistic dimensions of moral injury across three thematic sections. Section 1 explores how tools of the humanities provide new lenses for understanding conceptual and genealogical themes about moral injury. Section 2 highlights the experiences of moral injury in combat soldiers, law enforcement, and noncombatants such as photojournalists. These chapters examine the power and limits to theorizing moral phenomena by appeals to lived experience. Section 3 considers how humanistic inquiry illuminates important dimensions of the aftermath of moral injury beyond the scope of clinical research. These chapters consider how ritual, relationship repair, and atonement might shape the ways people navigate moral injury and consider how such responses shape our understandings of what we owe to one another.

Moral Injury and the Humanities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an essential resource for researchers and advanced students in philosophy, religious studies, literature, journalism, and the arts who are interested in moral injury.

Contents:

Introduction Andrew I. Cohen and Kathryn McClymondSection 1: Some Frameworks for Moral Injury 1. The Moral Challenges of Moral Injury Johannes Lang and Robin May Schott 2. Ulterior Motives and Moral Injury in War Saba Bazargan-Forward 3. Theorizing Moral Injury with Reports of Trauma Andrew I. Cohen and Jennifer A. Samp 4. The Ethics of Moral Injury David Rodin 5. Moral Injury and the Making of Amends Linda RadzikSection 2: Experiences of Moral Injury 6. Greek Tragedy, Virgil's Aeneid, and The Moral Injury of Combat Veterans and Health-Care Workers Henry Bayerle 7. Moral Injury in Law Enforcement John Kleinig 8. Photojournalism and Moral Injury: An Inquiry Lauren Walsh 9. The Moral Limits to Moral Testimony in Soldiering Kevin Cutright 10. Meaning-Making and Moral Injury: The Role of the Narrative in Understanding Trauma Joshua MantzSection 3: Accounts of Recovery: Applying Humanistic Approaches to Moral Injury 11. Evil in Innocence: Moral Injury and the Encounter with Children Alan Roof 12. On the Necessity of Ritual for Moral Injury Recovery Rita Nakashima Brock 13. Animist Forms of Atonement and Healing in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew BreakerJay Rajiva 14. Rituals and Moral Injury: How Veterans Make Peace Kathryn McClymond Conclusion Andrew I. Cohen and Kathryn McClymond