‘Doonesbury does Iraq’: Garry Trudeau and the politics of an anti-war strip

Abstract

This paper explores the ideological ramifications of using the theme of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a comic strip. The strip in question is Doonesbury, specifically a story involving the war in Iraq, and the entry-point for talking about ideology is an endorsement written for one of the Doonesbury reprint books by a prominent Republican politician. The essay's twin questions are: what does it mean for an anti-war strip to focus on PTSD (what ideological work is it doing), and, by extension, what are the implications of the apparent ‘commonsenseness’ of our understanding of the PTSD category?