Description
Abstract: Mortar bombs are used by state and non-state actors across the world. They are an old-fashioned, technologically basic and yet ubiquitous weapon. When fired many do not function, meaning that they lie waiting, unstable and dangerous scattered in fields and on roadsides. Faced with one such mortar in Baji, Iraq while working in explosive ordnance disposal I pictured the hands that had touched it before mine. How did those people perceive the mortar? This paper picks up this question and asks: How do people perceive objects designed to kill while living and working alongside them? And more specifically, what can the lifecycle of an 81mm mortar teach us about the way that humans relate to weapons of war? Taking the mortar as my starting point, I explore the perceptions of those working in production, sales, deployment and the mortars afterlife. My research has taken me from a factory in Wales to a testing centre in Austria, from arms fairs across Europe to a firing range in England and into people’s memories of conflict and post-conflict Iraq. Researching a mortar’s life is a route into understanding the networks, relations, and infrastructure at the heart of the ‘militarism of everyday life’ (MacLeish 2013, 24). Through this research I explore the social relations and dynamics of power, masculinity and domesticity which lead to the perpetuation and proliferation of weapons and armed conflict.
