The Phenomena of Encounter in the Theater of War: Restitution of the Self in Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet

Turner’s Iraq War experiences, as recounted in Here, Bullet, reflect a phenomenological experience of encounter, one that exposes the speaker to destruction in the warscape as it reconstructs a self that is inseparable from the “other.” Though Turner’s didactic intent relies on a reportage approach to the war, his operative exploitation of the figurative quickly overpowers the literal, while subjectivity and proliferation of subject extend the discursive potential of the texts. As the narrator dismantles the narrative present, indeterminacy forces create instability in the new space of encounter, fueled by nostalgia contending with an imposed alterity. The soldier-speaker’s fractured solitude calls for a commitment to the present, to the breach opened to the “other,” and to the recognition of a self now indissociable from the warscape.