Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.29162/ANAFORA.v13i1.6
Biopolitical Spectacle of Violence in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Jasna Poljak Rehlicki
orcid.org/0000-0002-6304-0718
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
Ben Fountain’s satirical war novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012) offers a sharp critique of American politics and culture by examining the intersection of violence, trauma, and spectacle during the War on Terror. Through the protagonist, Billy Lynn, and the members of his squad, who navigate a surreal celebration of their wartime heroism during a Thanksgiving Day halftime show, the novel contrasts the physical and psychological realities of war with the superficiality of consumerist patriotism. Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of biopower and biopolitics, as well as Mbembe’s necropolitics and Agamben’s ideas on the living dead, this paper provides a biopolitical reading and analysis of Halftime Walk. It examines how the soldier’s body functions as a biopolitical instrument, extending beyond the military as a standard institution of disciplinary control. It reveals the subtle, pervasive, yet systemic ways in which biopolitical violence operates. Additionally, the analysis uncovers the tactics and mechanisms of American necropolitics that control soldiers’ lives and deaths for political and financial gain and public reassurance, illustrating how soldiers are like the living dead, valued only for their symbolic role. With their war trauma erased from the halftime spectacle, the event becomes a grotesque display of entertainment and false patriotism. Billy must return to Iraq to complete his tour, and despite his biopolitical awakening, he realizes that he has no control over his body, whether alive or dead.
Keywords
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, biopolitics, necropolitics, violence, trauma, spectacle
Hrčak ID:
348115
URI
Publication date:
19.6.2026.
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