Paying Attention to Dead Bodies: The Future of Security Studies?

Auchter, Jessica

doi:10.1093/jogss/ogv005

Cited by 41 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Could there be something remiss in the responsibility of state to provide security to dead bodies? Many scholars like Auchter (2015Auchter ( , 2016 put the emphasis on holding the dead bodies as an analytical category; they are not only objects, they are also subjects of security. Corpses matter for how security is defined and for a wide variety of security behaviour.…”

Section: Securitisation Of Dead Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerging Discourses on Security—From ‘Traditional’ to ‘Worldly’ and Beyond: An Innovative Indian Perspective

Gaan

2018

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economie

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In the traditional conceptualisation of security, human beings remain predominantly at the centre stage claiming all privileges of military apparatus of the state by virtue of being 'superior' to all other living forms. Realist and neo-realist conceptualisations of the state see human kind as the sole reference point and subject of security. It is argued that the security of the state impregnates the individuals against all kinds of threats from the outside 'other'. With the emergence of non-traditional security paradigms and the broadening of the ambit of security to bring human beings directly to the mainstream, and include non-human material beings, the new materialism and worldly approaches obtain a different kind of prominence in the canon of security analysis. In this new approach, we can find the conceptualisation of 'being together' of human beings, other non-human living forms and the non-living material world being part of one whole world. This so-called 'worldly approach', articulates and emphasizes the realisation and feeling of human beings for the 'other', but falls short of suggesting any means by which human beings could expand themselves to include all-living and non-living forms to create new security models. This article analyses the relevance and applicability of ancient Indian wisdom substantiated by modern science to the analysis of state security.

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Section: Securitisation Of Dead Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emerging Discourses on Security—From ‘Traditional’ to ‘Worldly’ and Beyond: An Innovative Indian Perspective

Gaan

2018

Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economie

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“…Dead bodies can serve both to represent the failures of the system or as agents worthy of securing and protecting. 20 Images and commemorations of the past help us to promote places and localities in the modern time. 21 The state uses the commemoration of wars and catastrophes as ways of strengthening itself and renewing the nation through public displays.…”

Section: The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covering the Cough? Memory, Remembrance, and Influenza Amnesia

Youde

2017

Aus J of Politics History

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The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 20-100 million people, making it more lethal than the First World War and causing life expectancy rates to decline by approximately ten years. Nearly one hundred years later, though, there will be few (if any) commemorations of the pandemic and its effects on societies around the world, and the bodies affected are largely rendered invisible. Rather than trying to figure out how or why we remember, the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic requires us to consider why we don't remember. In this article, I suggest some possible reasons for this lack of remembrance and what it may say about the politics of memory. In particular, I consider the effects of transnationalism, the role of illness as a presence or absence within international politics, the absenting of bodies and how it contributes to commemorative silences, and the ambiguity around what gets performed when we remember or commemorate.

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“…It becomes even more so when the bodies on display have been subjected to violence that may in fact make them unrecognizable as bodies (cf. Auchter, 2016). Similarly governed by norms about respect for the dead, war museums have opted for more figurative expressions of death.…”

Section: Seeing Deathmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A corpse, according to Auchter (2016), can invoke 'ethical and moral questions' (p. 8): making dead bodies more visible is thus critical to the study of war. The complex questions embodied by a corpse are not just that corpses are produced, but how they are produced, and whether in ethical and moral ways.…”

Section: Death In the Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Death in the details: Finding dead bodies at the Canadian War Museum

Shah

2017

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Of the 13,000 works of art in the Canadian War Museum’s holdings, only 64 display dead bodies. Prevailing explanations of this absence revolve around respect for the dead and ethical responsibility to avoid the glorification of war. And yet death and destruction are pervasive in war. The irony is that one leaves the museum with the sense that war does not produce corpses, or at least not very many of them. Nowhere is this irony more evident than in the Canadian War Museum’s armaments collection, described as ‘the way in which human ingenuity has been applied to the science of war, creating weapons and other devices to attack, protect and kill’, but with only technical information about weapon calibre and capacities provided. This article describes an effort to dig up the dead. Studying the form and function of the labels accompanying weapons, I argue that seemingly mundane technical specifications classify and standardize certain kinds of bodily injury and death, and make the bodies destroyed by war present. Overall, arguing that injury and death are in the (technical) details, I challenge the assumption that a focus on technological devices sanitizes war. Instead, I propose a way to investigate and interrogate how death and injury in war are calibrated and embodied in the standards that make weapons ‘conventional’.

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Paying Attention to Dead Bodies: The Future of Security Studies?

Cited by 41 publications

References 31 publications

Emerging Discourses on Security—From ‘Traditional’ to ‘Worldly’ and Beyond: An Innovative Indian Perspective

Emerging Discourses on Security—From ‘Traditional’ to ‘Worldly’ and Beyond: An Innovative Indian Perspective

Covering the Cough? Memory, Remembrance, and Influenza Amnesia

Death in the details: Finding dead bodies at the Canadian War Museum

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