Periodic Reporting for period 2 - WARFUN (War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-03-31
Fun has every shade of connotation, from the most joyful to the most sinister. In a sporadic and anecdotal way, novels, films, music and, more recently, blogs and social media remind us that those involved directly in the horrors of war also experience fun, excitement, and allure. However, the element of fun in war has rarely been the focus of systematic theorization and empirical scrutiny in the social sciences. This gap in academic research has had several effects. Firstly, it has contributed in confining emotions to the private sphere, thus compromising a deep understanding of the nexus of politics and emotions in war. Secondly, it has resulted in a historically shaped “morality of war” that, at least to a certain extent, has overlooked the different moralities of war manifested and expressed by those directly involved in war. In other words, the focus has mainly been put on “moral dissonance” in the sense of the ethical dilemmas that soldiers face instead of on the broad plurality of moral attitudes that reveal different yet simultaneous emotional and psychological repertoires of adaptation, identification, exacerbation, and resistance to the multiple effects and dynamics of war. Thirdly, the lack of systematic studies of fun in war has prevented state and military institutions from understanding fun as intrinsic to the rationality of war. For instance, when British soldiers beat Iraqi citizen Baha Mousa to death in 2003 or when detainees in Abu Ghraib suffered tortures from US soldiers – along with a series of many other examples – “fun” played a role in the way the violence was inflicted and justified. However, these episodes were largely labeled as exceptions by both military authorities and the media, thus reproducing the widely accepted but misplaced assumption that fun (as well as pleasure, joy, etc.) is alien to the way that war and soldiering are experienced on the ground.
Although recent studies have started to address the complex array of feelings and experiences in war, the questions related to the moral, strategic, psychological, emotional, and social implications of fun in war remain understudied in the social sciences. It is important to focus on elements such as fun or pleasure because, given that they are commonly understood as antithetical to war and beyond its scope, they give us the opportunity to expand the very meaning of what it means to be at war, thus rethinking the epistemology of war.
The suffering and hardships that humans endure within war cannot be stressed enough. It is precisely for this reason, however, that we need a more nuanced understanding of war experiences. In the WARFUN project, we aim at unveiling the plurality of experiences and affective grammars that would otherwise be neglected by the exclusive focus on military and normative analyses. The anthropological tradition of “fieldwork under fire” emphasizes the ambivalent sentiments that arise as troubles escalate during large-scale violence and the crucial role that social actors have in determining the magnitude and consequences of conflict. War can only be understood through the broadest and the most complex assemblages of emotions and imagination available. It is only by taking the wide array of sensations and emotions into account that we will be equipped to understand how war blurs the boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary and to foresee the long-term, articulated effects of war on those who practice it. This consideration builds on the assumption that war has a co-participative epistemic nature, since it cannot be simply described as the by-product of political decisions from above; war is also determined by participation and initiatives from below.
Our research advances along two main axes of research:
a) Thrill of war: The first axis of research looks at the feeling of enjoyment and euphoria generated by being involved in armed combat. We can perhaps get a sense of the ludic dimension of war through the agential character of violence and its carnivalesque atmosphere. In this sense, war and its violent corollary would enact what Mikhail Bakhtin observed during carnival time, namely the temporary suspension of hierarchies and a specific kind of communication, which is impossible in everyday life. This form of communication enables a sense of fun that takes on a hue of a carnivalesque abandon, even when violence is involved, where “the other” is mocked and the everyday sense of morality is transgressed through jokes and forms of bodily humor. In such a context, fun is understood as an expression of both direct and indirect communication, a manner of public engagement as well as a “ritual of inversion” in which the proprieties of structure (the declared goals and mandates of war) are lampooned and violated, yet the finalities of the project of war (dominion, control, etc.) remain intact.
b) Fun under conditions of warfare: While the previous axis of research shows how the suspension of the ordinary generates conditions for fun to emerge, “fun under conditions of warfare” sheds light on soldiers’ and fighters’ attempts to retrieve a lost sense of normalcy by engaging in activities that convey a sense of joy and well-being. Crucially, fun does not exist in opposition to large-scale violence but can be deeply implicated within it. In the midst of traumatic, deadly events, the protracted experience of war also implies that it is often boredom and fun that become dominant feelings. In these situations, fun provides a venue for re-creating the ordinary against frustration, violence, and destruction. It becomes a significant form of resilience that provides people with creative ways to acquire a sense of normalcy and create new values amidst political and social instability.
By following these two axes of research, the WARFUN project does not merely focus on the escapist strategies of fun, but rather on its generative dimension.
Although recent studies have started to address the complex array of feelings and experiences in war, the questions related to the moral, strategic, psychological, emotional, and social implications of fun in war remain understudied in the social sciences. It is important to focus on elements such as fun or pleasure because, given that they are commonly understood as antithetical to war and beyond its scope, they give us the opportunity to expand the very meaning of what it means to be at war, thus rethinking the epistemology of war.
The suffering and hardships that humans endure within war cannot be stressed enough. It is precisely for this reason, however, that we need a more nuanced understanding of war experiences. In the WARFUN project, we aim at unveiling the plurality of experiences and affective grammars that would otherwise be neglected by the exclusive focus on military and normative analyses. The anthropological tradition of “fieldwork under fire” emphasizes the ambivalent sentiments that arise as troubles escalate during large-scale violence and the crucial role that social actors have in determining the magnitude and consequences of conflict. War can only be understood through the broadest and the most complex assemblages of emotions and imagination available. It is only by taking the wide array of sensations and emotions into account that we will be equipped to understand how war blurs the boundaries between the ordinary and the extraordinary and to foresee the long-term, articulated effects of war on those who practice it. This consideration builds on the assumption that war has a co-participative epistemic nature, since it cannot be simply described as the by-product of political decisions from above; war is also determined by participation and initiatives from below.
Our research advances along two main axes of research:
a) Thrill of war: The first axis of research looks at the feeling of enjoyment and euphoria generated by being involved in armed combat. We can perhaps get a sense of the ludic dimension of war through the agential character of violence and its carnivalesque atmosphere. In this sense, war and its violent corollary would enact what Mikhail Bakhtin observed during carnival time, namely the temporary suspension of hierarchies and a specific kind of communication, which is impossible in everyday life. This form of communication enables a sense of fun that takes on a hue of a carnivalesque abandon, even when violence is involved, where “the other” is mocked and the everyday sense of morality is transgressed through jokes and forms of bodily humor. In such a context, fun is understood as an expression of both direct and indirect communication, a manner of public engagement as well as a “ritual of inversion” in which the proprieties of structure (the declared goals and mandates of war) are lampooned and violated, yet the finalities of the project of war (dominion, control, etc.) remain intact.
b) Fun under conditions of warfare: While the previous axis of research shows how the suspension of the ordinary generates conditions for fun to emerge, “fun under conditions of warfare” sheds light on soldiers’ and fighters’ attempts to retrieve a lost sense of normalcy by engaging in activities that convey a sense of joy and well-being. Crucially, fun does not exist in opposition to large-scale violence but can be deeply implicated within it. In the midst of traumatic, deadly events, the protracted experience of war also implies that it is often boredom and fun that become dominant feelings. In these situations, fun provides a venue for re-creating the ordinary against frustration, violence, and destruction. It becomes a significant form of resilience that provides people with creative ways to acquire a sense of normalcy and create new values amidst political and social instability.
By following these two axes of research, the WARFUN project does not merely focus on the escapist strategies of fun, but rather on its generative dimension.
Our research is geographically and methodologically plural, including ethnographic, visual, and historical analyses of war experiences among Italian, French, German, and Norwegian soldiers, as well as former child soldiers associated with Boko Haram and partisans of the People’s Liberation Struggle in Yugoslavia (1941-1945). One of the most important outcomes of this research to date was the revelation that 'fun' and related positive emotions could play a pivotal role in both the perpetuation and endurance of armed groups and military cultures. Traditionally, force, violence, coercion, revenge, anger, and survival have dominated explanations for people's involvement in war. However, our findings unearthed a paradoxical dimension where 'fun' acted as a driving force for people's association with military life. The element of 'fun', along with pleasure, joy, excitement, etc., transcends mere ways of "coping with", serving as an active mechanism through which people navigate, interpret, and even reshape their social realities amidst violence. Furthermore, the nuanced understanding of 'fun' as both a creator and disruptor of social worlds was another breakthrough. Such insights caution against simplistic interpretations of people's motivations and behaviors in conflict zones and emphasize the importance of considering the full range of human experiences, even in the most challenging circumstances.
One striking element that has emerged from our research to date is that military personnel are often the most critical of what war really is in all its contradictions, beyond rhetorical descriptions. Indeed, one main goal of the project is to challenge the narrative of exception that often accompanies war’s brutality. For instance, there is a dominant propaganda that seems to suggest war can be conducted according to a set of acceptable, standardized, and abstract rules. It puts forth an idea of a well-behaved war where only military targets are destroyed, force is not used in excess, and right and wrong are clearly defined. This rhetoric is used by governments, the mass media, and also scholars to make war more acceptable, even attractive, for the masses. Whatever deviates from this idea of a proper and noble war is considered an exception. US soldiers torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib: an exception. German soldiers playing with a human skull in Afghanistan: an exception. The US soldier who went on a house-to-house rampage in an Afghan village, killing 16 civilians including several children with no reason: an exception. War crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan: an exception. Iraqi prisoners tortured by British troops: an exception. Members of the Stryker Combat Brigade in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport: an exception. French airstrikes at a wedding party in Mali: an exception. The Mahmudiyah rape and murders where US soldiers raped and killed a 14-year-old girl and killed her family: an exception.
All exceptions? No. As our research among those who fight shows, this is exactly what war is. Governments make big efforts to explain that these kinds of episodes don’t belong to a normal war conducted according to International Humanitarian Law, reiterating the idea of the possibility of a decent war without any excess or extravagance.
In the narrative of the good and decent war, the killing of civilians is recounted with hypocrisy as an evitable side effect, even though systematically targeting civilians is a feature of all contemporary wars; for example, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been directly killed in the US post-9/11 wars alone, with many more losses due to those wars’ reverberating impacts. As soldiers, fighters and veterans tell us, the idea of a clean and efficient war is a lie. War is a chaotic universe of military strategies intertwined with inhumanity, violations, uncertainty, doubts, and deceit. In all combat zones emotions such as fear, shame, joy, excitement, surprise, anger, cruelty, and compassion co-exist. Horror and fun belong to the same epistemic space in war. However, the ongoing production of glorifying representations of war constantly adds to a massive body of films, articles, books, songs, and so on that disguise war as something noble that can be encouraged. We expect our project to show that, together with understanding the causes and reasons for war (politics, conquest, profit, intolerance, access to resources, but also liberation and independence) we should also understand the way war is justified or promoted along patterns that often mystify historical processes and misuse specific cultural, religious, or social categories and differences. Addressing fun in war, gives us the possibility of navigating a broader spectrum of emotions and moralities in a constant attempt to look at war for what it is.
All exceptions? No. As our research among those who fight shows, this is exactly what war is. Governments make big efforts to explain that these kinds of episodes don’t belong to a normal war conducted according to International Humanitarian Law, reiterating the idea of the possibility of a decent war without any excess or extravagance.
In the narrative of the good and decent war, the killing of civilians is recounted with hypocrisy as an evitable side effect, even though systematically targeting civilians is a feature of all contemporary wars; for example, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been directly killed in the US post-9/11 wars alone, with many more losses due to those wars’ reverberating impacts. As soldiers, fighters and veterans tell us, the idea of a clean and efficient war is a lie. War is a chaotic universe of military strategies intertwined with inhumanity, violations, uncertainty, doubts, and deceit. In all combat zones emotions such as fear, shame, joy, excitement, surprise, anger, cruelty, and compassion co-exist. Horror and fun belong to the same epistemic space in war. However, the ongoing production of glorifying representations of war constantly adds to a massive body of films, articles, books, songs, and so on that disguise war as something noble that can be encouraged. We expect our project to show that, together with understanding the causes and reasons for war (politics, conquest, profit, intolerance, access to resources, but also liberation and independence) we should also understand the way war is justified or promoted along patterns that often mystify historical processes and misuse specific cultural, religious, or social categories and differences. Addressing fun in war, gives us the possibility of navigating a broader spectrum of emotions and moralities in a constant attempt to look at war for what it is.