fluidity of military

7/30/2019 fluidity of military

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Pamela Moss

Studies in Policy & Practice

and

Michael J. Prince

Lansdowne Professor of Social Policy

April 9, 2010


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SSHRC study on weary warriors

Psychologically wounded soldiers during combat

A triad of discourses: psychiatry, the military, and

masculinity Time frame: 19th century to early 21st century

Theoretical entre: post-structural and feminist

Method: documentary-historical

Sources: medical and military journals, novels,autobiographies, diaries, social science literature,hospital records, policy papers, popular moviegenre, unpublished theses


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How do material bodies and bodily discoursesof individual lives constitute the subjectivity ofweary warriors?

How is illness taken up by differentconfigurations of power/knowledge over time?

How are distinctions between the well soldierand the ill soldier established and enacted?

How do soldiers find support institutionallywithin and outside the military as well ascollectively as veterans with ill bodies?


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How does a post-structural approach look at themilitary?

What did Foucault say about the military andsoldiers?

What in Foucaults work is useful for our researchproject and questions?

What may be problematic in his work for ourpurposes?

In sum, how might we bring into play Foucault?


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Moving off an institutional-centric view

Questioning the conventional image of

militaries as stable, closed and formal Challenging the concept of soldiers as docile

bodies

Looking for fluid identities, practices andrelationships associated with domains ofknowledge


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Awesome forces of the sovereign

Large destructive mechanisms

Precise systems of command

Disciplinary institutions

A technique and a body of knowledge

The intermediary between war and civil

society


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Militaries invest in bodies, mark them, trainand command them

Discipline as composing forces to obtain anefficient machine

Soldiers as docile bodies the object andtarget of power: manipulated by

selection/screening, indoctrination andtraining, authority practices


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Never saw the military as an apparatus in and ofitself with people and processes

Heavy emphasis on official practices and systems

of discipline

Bodies produced are static and monolithic

Little room for agency or resistance by soldierswho are docile bodies

Distinction between the body and soul/psycheunderdeveloped and not applied to military contexts


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Foucault also wrote of people as living, thinkingbeings (suggestive of soldiers as active, interpretivesubjects)

Normalization as a process of creating and applyingknowledge organized around certain standards andtypes (human sciences)

Subjugated knowledge: the silent, the overlooked,below the surface

Consider wider historical processes within whichmilitary institutions and practices actually operate


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1. Lacking definite shapenot the usual image of amilitary

2. Smooth, nimble, gracefulin a ceremonial and

spectacle sense, and in covert and strategicoperations

3. Adaptable, flexiblein tension with commandand control system, although recognized in part innotion of tactics and contingency plans

4. Unstable, randomness

the unspoken andignored meaning as it applies to the military: theweary warriors


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We plan to explore and examine:

Diagnosis as a disciplining process via

categorization of bodily sensations Treatment as the regulation of bodies by

attempting the return to normal

Militarization and psychiatrization asprocesses that produce soldiers bodies as ill

Life after the military


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Questions?

Comments?

Suggestions?

fluidity of military

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