Three Propositions on the Phenomenology of War

The Private Militarized and Security Contractor as Geocorporeal Actor

“…Here, geocorporeality draws attention to the complex and nuanced character of embodied human agency in its inseparable international/local aspects, where recourse to utility maximizing (Kessler :89) perspectives are noted to inhere within industry rules and regulations, to which it is assumed contractors will respond rationally. As we have argued however, like combatants, contractors “are not simply bare life units of strategic calculation but are also [embodied] repositories of meaning” (Brighton :102), and while regulation is to be welcomed, attempts to modify the social practice of trigger happy or high profile contractors who unsettle, injure or kill member of the host population, depends on more than “idealized forms of corporeal being… [as] ways of life [able to be] informed by international law” (Caraccioli :100). The ICoC is but a blunt instrument of reform since it is ill‐equipped to fully grasp the experiential realities and legacies of military conditioning underscored in vague recommendations for the further training of contractors, for example.…”

“…Soldiers are required to develop corporeal repertoires capable of enactment under conditions of great stress and temporal pressure, with a significant number becoming expert in the use of weaponry as key elements of their martial becoming (Brighton :104). Embodied responses oriented toward the death of the enemy, or alternatively protection of self and peer, rapidly reach the status of latent disposition residing in, and central to the practical accomplishments of, these body‐subjects.…”

Of bats and bodies: methods for reading and writing embodiment

“…Critical war studies teaches us that war is 'generative' and that 'we cannot take for granted the identities of the entities which engage in it, nor define its geographic and temporal scope solely in terms of sovereign territorial states and their battle casualties' (Barkawi, 2011: 710; see also Brighton, 2011;Sylvester, 2012). A recognition of this should also compel us to see how war, and in my case how embodied selves and stories write war, can be unpacked through exploring the connectivity between these bodies, lives, and stories.…”

“…This not only does important political work in opposing a disembodied and disconnected analysis of war, but centralising human experiences, embodiment and corporeality can also help us analyse more fully how war is 'generative' of far more than states, borders and particular policies (Barkawi and Brighton, 2011;Brighton, 2011;Dyvik, 2016). This Special Issue extends this call to the level of the researcher and invites us to reflect on our own situatedness in relation to the spaces, subjects and phenomena studied and to try to tease out the range of embodiments these hold.…”

Of bats and bodies: methods for reading and writing embodiment

“…It is increasingly being recognised within 'critical war studies' and 'critical military studies' that humans, with all their variable compositions, emotions, and experiences should be central when studying war and militarism (Sylvester, 2013;Parashar, 2013;McSorley, 2013;Åhäll and Gregory, 2015;Wilcox, 2015; also see articles in this issue). This not only does important political work in opposing a disembodied and disconnected analysis of war, but centralising human experiences, embodiment and corporeality can also help us analyse more fully how war is 'generative' of far more than states, borders and particular policies (Barkawi and Brighton, 2011;Brighton, 2011;Dyvik, 2016). This Special Issue extends this call to the level of the researcher and invites us to reflect on our own situatedness in relation to the spaces, subjects and phenomena studied and to try to tease out the range of embodiments these hold.…”