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This article examines Rawi Hage's (2006) De Niro's Game and Hany Abu-Assad's (2005) Paradise Now for their capacity to give us insight into the meanings of racialized masculinities. Neither text represents a very consoling picture of men in war and conflict, but they have a great deal to teach us about the fragility that underpins masculinity in volatile political contexts. Indeed, they give us insight into the affective realities of racial traumas that inhabit our constructions of identity, ideological positionalities, and cultural representation. Inspired by Frantz Fanon's (1952) plea for a new humanism and Paul Gilroy's (2005) assertion that we attend to and politicize human suffering, I propose a psychoanalytic aesthetics of loss as a model for understanding and renewing cultural and political life. My method demands that we recognize that aesthetic cultural texts have an emotional source and that “being touched” by affect might teach us how to become better readers of our time.