Fractured lives, digital selves: Writing the self in post-invasion Iraq

Abstract

The first decade of the 21st century will be remembered as a time of terror and war. As the toxic dust clouds settled over the people of New York City and strategies were developed for the wars to come, it may have been difficult to imagine the terrible violence that would be exacted against the civilian population in Iraq. Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi women took up a place in the blogosphere to write about their experiences of the war. In this article we tell stories about young women in Iraq and how they blogged their experiences in post-invasion Iraq and the ways in which digital spaces enabled them to write a self during a time of war. We argue that digital fields of possibility offer bloggers possibilities for reflexive thinking, for engaging with and critiquing social limits, and for shaping a digital self.