Wounds, Debilitation, and Explosive Pagers in Lebanon

Abstract

While studies on wounds in the medical and health sciences have focused on the clinical optimization of care and the reconstruction of the body after injury, anthropology can offer a conceptual framework for attending to wounds as affective, communal, and political entities. In this paper, I unpack how wounds in Lebanon transcend the individual injured body and become entangled in broader landscapes of violence by examining the digital circulation of photographs documenting maimed bodies following the Israeli pager attacks in Lebanon on 17 September 2024. My analysis builds on an ethnographic body of work that treats wounds as methods and affective subjects. I argue that, beyond being medical objects, wounds are translators of the broader politics of wounding. Furthermore, they function as tools of substantiation for the presence of violent, foreign forces and killer technologies that maim individuals, communities, and local life-support systems. Finally, wounds mobilize assertions of life, humanity, and resistance in the face of deliberate debilitation. The study contributes to medical anthropological research on wounds and woundedness in war-ridden contexts.