Description
In 2018 and under pressure to account for increasing numbers of German soldiers returning from deployments with physical and especially psychological injuries, the German government introduced the contested status of veterans. Other than the official state politics surrounding (wounded) veterans, there is a number of veteran associations – these are networks of care, self-help, advocacy and commemoration. My focus lies on the performative power of embodied expressions of vulnerability through bodily acts, such as shaking, eye twitching or tears, as well as on the orchestration of bodies at events and spectacles rendering the veterans’ wounds in/visible (or otherwise affectively in/tangible). I investigate what politics and affective communities are interpellated by such bodily practices of showing/hiding trauma and violence. This study is based on my participant observations at veteran sports and commemoration events, comradeship evenings, as well as qualitative interviews. This multi-sited approach allows me to evaluate how different practices stick certain attributes to the image of veterans, and at the same time constitute a multi-faceted imaginary of violent situations that appear to have inscribed themselves into the veterans’ bodies. I draw on literature on affect/emotion and visuality in IR and Critical Military Studies.
