The Remains of War: Bodies, Politics, and the Search for American
Soldiers Unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. By Thomas M. Hawley.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 282p. $22.95.
The central thesis of this book is that the unresolved issue
fueling the continued divisiveness of the Vietnam War is the key legacy of
the unaccounted-for remains of America's missing in action (MIAs) in
Indochina. It is a thesis that Thomas Hawley propounds at several levels.
His argument is empirical in its depiction of the investigative processes
and results of the actual searches for these men. It is semiotic in its
focus on the symbol of their bodies as “signing” for the
larger issues still surrounding the war. It is an investigation into the
impact on the American popular and political culture of these
bodies—those of the visible veterans and of the invisible,
fragmented missing soldiers—in terms of how they are depicted in the
arts (Hollywood mostly) and in memorials. Finally, it aspires to a more
profound philosophical level in assessing the moral and political
implications of this thesis for our larger understanding of the Vietnam
War itself. Although this book is well worth reading, its success at all
these levels is only intermittent.