Description
In this article, we reflect on the Swedish Defense Family; its relationship to violence; and our positions within it as civilian researchers. Through conversations with each other, reflections on our joint workplace (a defense university), and the broader Critical Military Studies literature, we ask: what does it mean to be in this family, who can be a member, and how does the family manifest military violence? Using ethnographic vignettes, we illustrate how different forms of militarised practices both serve to draw us in and reject us from the family. We trace how emotions (anxiety, pride, pleasure, confusion) that accompany military projects – and its calls to family – work to obscure military violence. Informed by feminist-queer research, we argue that these emotions are evocative of spaces-in-between, where the stated claim of the Swedish military and other actors in the defence sector to integrate LGBTQIA+ and gender perspectives stands in tension with their mandate to further violence. In conclusion we suggest that family as metaphor can be used to approach and understand militaries and their claim to violence; and that the positions and spaces of in-between are particularly well-suited for undertaking this critique.
