Description
The contemporary military memoir has – of late – become a central focus of much work in the fields of International Relations, Critical Military/Security Studies, as well as Feminist and Literary Theory. So far, however, very little has been said about the place of ‘visibility,’ and/or ‘transparency,’ therein. This in many ways seems strange given that such objects are routinely and manifestly sold to the public on the basis of their claim to the harrowing ‘true story’ of someone who was ‘really there.’ Indeed, from the point of public perception, these texts would seem like the ultimate tool of communal-knowing – an object which promises to ‘lift the veil’ on the privileged, or secret, knowledge of national-security. This project is aimed at thinking-through these claims. Beginning from Jean Baudrillard’s work on ‘simulation,’ and ‘hyper-reality,’ it will be argued that, in enacting the realities of which its speaks, the military memoir does serve a certain, limited democratic-function (viz. the practice of ‘disclosure’). However, it will also be seen that there is too a violent side to this function; inasmuch as these texts do also formulate certain ‘scopic-regimes’ (Grayson & Mawdsley 2019) through which the enmity of the other is established. While this reading will inevitably position the military memoir has having a Manichaean-like political structure, that is, both a virtuous and violent politics, it will also be observed that, in furnishing the traces of its own deconstruction, these texts do have the potential – in any moment – to ‘oscillate’ between a variety of political claims, commitments, and positionalities. A reality that will thereby see them positioned as Möbius-like structures of transparency, visibility, and disclosure, and, therefore, thoroughly postmodern expressions of battlefield practices and politics.
