Towards an Embodied Sociology of War

Abstract

While sociology has historically not been a good interlocutor of war, this paper argues that the body has always known war, and that it is to the corporeal that we can turn in an attempt to develop a language to better speak of its myriad violences and its socially generative force. It argues that war is a crucible of social change that is prosecuted, lived and reproduced via the occupation and transformation of myriad bodies in numerous ways from exhilaration to mutilation. War and militarism need to be traced and analysed in terms of their fundamental, diverse and often brutal modes of embodied experience and apprehension. This paper thus invites sociology to extend its imaginative horizon to rethink the crucial and enduring social institution of war as a broad array of fundamentally embodied experiences, practices and regimes.

The art of parachuting: Embodied geopolitics, aerial aesthetics and dance‐based combat training at Ringway Aerodrome, 1940–1946

“…The 9/11 terror attacks, however, prompted renewed interest in military practices, their spatialities, and with the emergence of a feminist geopolitical trajectory (Åhäll & Gregory, ; Hyndman, ; Sharp, ; Sylvester, ) saw political geographers, alongside scholars in international relations and security studies (Wilcox, ), shift their focus toward micro questions of the body. Although there remain those who argue that we have yet to fully conceptualise the complexities through which the doings and makings of war come to be embodied (Dyvik & Greenwood, ; see McSorley, ; Pain, ), significant strides have been made to deepen our knowledge of the relationship between the body and war.…”

Of bats and bodies: methods for reading and writing embodiment

“…Helene Cixous (1976), Donna Haraway (1988), Elizabeth Grosz (1994), Moira Gatens (1996), Susan Bordo (2003),Iris Marion Young (2005) and Judith Butler (1993) (to name a few) have in their own ways tackled the sticky web of the mind/body distinction. Traditions within sociology, anthropology and philosophy also exist that take embodiment as a crucial component of social and political life, and integrate this into knowledge production (see among others Mauss, 1973;De Certeau, 2011;Scarry, 1985;Cowan, 1990;Merleau-Ponty, 2002;McSorley, 2014). When working within feminist scholarship and traditions that take 2 To illustrate this, Harari aptly points to how in conferences on war and genocide, participants still expect to be provided with plenty of refreshments, comfortable chairs and well-air-conditioned rooms (Harari, 2009: 225).…”

Of bats and bodies: methods for reading and writing embodiment

“…War is seen to reveal some deep truth, one that can only be captured through the 'extreme bodily condition of war' (Harari, 2008: 7). This shift carries within it a recognition of war as a 'radically embodying event' (Scarry, 1985;McSorley, 2014), one which transcends 'normal' human modes of expression.…”

“…While it is true that large parts of academic scholarship avoids granting emotions, senses and embodiment, all crucial components of 'flesh-witnesses' any real purchase, this is not the case in all of scholarship. sociology, anthropology and philosophy also exist that take embodiment as a crucial component of social and political life, and integrate this into knowledge production (see among others Mauss, 1973;De Certeau, 2011;Scarry, 1985;Cowan, 1990;Merleau-Ponty, 2002;McSorley, 2014). When working within feminist scholarship and traditions that take 2 To illustrate this, Harari aptly points to how in conferences on war and genocide, participants still expect to be provided with plenty of refreshments, comfortable chairs and well-air-conditioned rooms (Harari, 2009: 225).…”