This chapter will discuss the geopolitical imaginary and the social as they are produced-defended and questioned-by romance novels written by contemporary US writers who focus on the relationship between ex-military men and women who belong to paramilitary organisations devoted to protecting national territory from within and abroad, either legitimately or illegitimately. Danger is both a plot device and a condition of possibility for the relationship to flourish and endure suggesting that the prevailing structure of felling is one of “low-level fear”, to quote Brian Massumi. Those novels set abroad critically address the personal and collective costs of a normalised state of perpetual war while simultaneously supporting US interventionism. In both settings, home and abroad, the novels explore the tension between lawfulness, civilian resistance as national defence and a patriotic coupledom that territorializes space in an effort to demarcate a safe zone in a social order experienced as increasingly threatened and precarious.
Here's the abstract: