The doctoral dissertation in the field of English language and culture will be examined at the Philosophical Faculty at Joensuu campus.
What is the topic of your doctoral research? Why is it important to study the topic?
I study how fiction written by American veterans of the War on Terror challenges popular imaginings of war, soldiering, and the nation. The research focuses on how these texts create counternarratives that problematize clear categories of the American soldier as a hero or a traumatized victim. These counternarratives politicize narrative content that would otherwise remain contained by these categories. In this way, contemporary veteran texts often present forceful critiques of the social and cultural status of the American soldier. As the cultural figure of the soldier is also a potent national metaphor, my research also examines how a generation long war has shaped American society and influenced the country’s relationship with the wider world. Veteran literature is situated between the civilian and military worlds and thus presents a unique perspective on these changes. The study of veteran literature reveals the cultural, social, and political implications of an unending state of war. The research also demonstrates that war literature always expresses a political dimension beyond the spectacles of individual trauma or combat.
What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research?
The research found that many contemporary war narratives written by American veteran authors present a more fractured and multivalent picture of war than that found in popular culture. In these texts, the American soldier is not a heroic figure or a traumatized victim but rather an ambivalent and contradictory figure. This ambivalence also extends to the enemy who appears as a multifaceted figure instead of a caricature. The texts draw connections between the figures of the American soldier and the enemy to illustrate how a shared experience of violence binds individuals on opposing sides of a war together. These elements contest the traditional hero/enemy binary and generate political and social critiques of war and the United States.
Contemporary veteran narratives thus challenge previous conventions of American war literature which often examines war through the lens of a combat soldier’s trauma. In contrast, many contemporary veteran authors narrate the experience of war from the perspective of the enemy militant or civilian. The texts use narrative strategies that set the war experiences of soldiers, civilians, and the enemy in historical, social, and political contexts. Similarly, whereas combat is often the defining narrative element in earlier American war literature, the texts examined intentionally sideline combat as a narrative stage. This shifts the narrative focus from the immediate experience of violence to its consequences on an individual and collective level. Consequently, contemporary veteran narratives are able reveal the wider implications of war at home and abroad. They highlight the often invisible ways in which war returns home in the form of militarized social, cultural, and political practices.
How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice?
For the scientific community, the research offers a rich theoretical framework for future research on the political dimensions of war literature. The study also furthers the field of American literary and cultural studies through the analysis of veteran texts and the cultural figure of the American soldier. For the general public, the research also shows the enduring importance of literary works in understanding cultural change. Literature not only interrogates history and the present but also anticipates future developments. The results of this study illuminate how perpetual war has contributed to the rapid changes in American society and its role on the world stage.
What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research?
The research builds on Fredric Jameson’s theory of the political unconscious to construct an interpretive framework for the political reading of war literature. This framework consists of two central elements that I term as the military unconscious and the hegemonic soldier. The military unconscious is a type of political unconscious that emerges from the shared lived-in experiences of current and former members of the military and their families. The hegemonic soldier is the ideological construct that informs popular discourses of war, soldiering, and national identity. I argue that the military unconscious of veteran texts generates symbolic solutions to real contradictions between lived experience and the expectations set by the hegemonic soldier. The framework incorporates material from fields such as border studies, postcolonial theory, and postmodernism. I also use Donald E. Pease’s theory of American exceptionalism as a state fantasy to trace the post-World War 2 evolution of the American hegemonic soldier, and how it is mobilized by the state to legitimate actions abroad and at home. This figure of the exceptional soldier is rooted in mythical discourses of American exceptionalism that formed the basis of post-World War 2 American national identity.
The case studies consist of four contemporary texts written by American veteran authors: Phil Klay’s "Redeployment", Elliot Ackerman’s "Green on Blue" and "Dark at the Crossing", and Matt Gallagher’s "Empire City". The case studies examine how the texts’ underlying military unconscious generates counternarratives that challenge the exceptional soldier through political critiques of war, soldering, and the nation.
Further information: Ari Räisänen, ari.raisanen@uef.fi