Kontra I Peligru, Na'fansåfo' Ham: The Production of Military (In)Security In Guåhan

Abstract

Guåhan, more commonly known as Guam, is an unincorporated territory of the United States where the U.S. military currently occupies 27% of the island. Despite such heavy occupation and political inferiority, the hegemonic discourse surrounding the military presence in the island is that they keep the island “secure.” In this dissertation, I critically investigate this claim and show that rather than keep the island secure, that the military through forced powerlessness and a continuum of slow, steady, and eventless violence, produces a condition of rampant insecurity in Guåhan. Furthermore, I articulate the phenomenon of sustainable insecurity, whereby this insecurity is made sustainable as opposed to being raised to the urgency of a crisis through mitigation, dependency, and discursive formations. Throughout, I demonstrate how Guåhan’s form-of-life is produced via the entanglement of Guåhan’s militarization and unincorporated territory status. Through archival research, interviews, discursive analysis, and historical detail, this dissertation traverses the political, land, economic, and environmental realms of Guåhan to excavate the genealogy of insecurity and the operationalization of violence in the island and argue heavily against the hegemonic belief that the U.S. military is the provider of Guåhan’s security.