Conflict, Intimacy, and Military Wives: A Lively Geopolitics

冲突、亲密关系和军人妻子：生动的地缘政治

• 批准号: ES/T008334/1
• 负责人: Alice Cree
• 金额: $ 30.96万
• 依托单位: Newcastle University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FT008334%2F1
• 关键词: Conflict; Intimacy; Military; Wives; Lively

In the aftermath of a period of deployment that has span across nearly two decades, the recovery of veterans and serving members of the armed forces has become a central concern for the British state. A 2018 Government report indicated that as many as 10% of British veterans could suffer from mental health conditions, with deployment and combat exposure being recognized triggers (House of Commons Defence Committee 2018). Clinical services have been developed alongside non-clinical services and support for veterans, with the aim of helping ex-servicemen and women to properly reintegrate into society, and in recent years participatory theatre has been increasingly mobilised as a way of helping veterans to 'recover' from trauma and injury. Beyond simply mechanisms of recovery, these kinds of military performance projects have, like other cultural forms, become a popular form of communicating war stories to a receptive public audience. One only has to look to the success of military theatre projects such as the Royal British Legion's The Two Worlds of Charlie F, which won the prestigious Amnesty International Award for Freedom of Expression, and Lola Arias' Minefield which continues to tour across the world in its third year, to see that there is a great deal of public interest in the lived experiences of war and conflict.Creative and theatrical approaches to exploring these lived experiences have a great deal of potential for helping the public think critically about the diverse effects of war on communities and individuals. And yet, what we continue to see in these projects and performances is a privileging of masculine heroic soldier narratives and images of spatially 'far away' wars. In these narratives, the lived experiences of military partners and families are rarely given a platform, let alone centered, meaning that the domestic and intimate sites in which conflict can play out are absent from the conversation. This sidelining of military wives is further reflected in the 'lip-service' paid to military families in the rhetoric of the Armed Forces Covenant, despite long standing recognition that families play an integral role in upholding military practices and values.In a departure from these masculinized narratives regarding the nature and sites of war, this research will explore 'conflict' from the perspective of military wives, as something which plays out not only in far-away battle sites but also in intimate domestic spaces and personal relationships. It will use theatre techniques from Theatre of the Oppressed, forum theatre, and Rainbow of Desires, which focus on mobilising drama to explore conflict and resolution, to help us think differently about what the real lived impacts of conflict and deployment are for military families. Research has shown that creative performance groups and projects have great value for empowering and giving a voice to military wives and female veterans. The proposed project will extend this research, and explore how participatory community theatre can not only empower military spouses, but also change how we approach 'conflict' in political geography.The research questions for this project are as follows:1) How can theatre help to centre the agency and significance of military wives in the study of the lived impacts of armed conflict?2) How might creative research with military wives help us to understand 'conflict' as a fluid complex of violence that permeates intimate and domestic spaces?3) What can forum theatre-as-method do that other methods cannot in critical military studies?The long term ambitions of the project are to help shape public debate on the spaces and consequences of 'war' through the theatre performance and Q&A, and to help shape MoD provision of support for military families.

在经历了长达近20年的部署之后，退伍军人和现役军人的康复已成为英国政府关注的中心问题。2018年的一份政府报告显示，多达10%的英国退伍军人可能患有精神健康问题，而部署和战斗暴露是公认的触发因素（下议院国防委员会2018年）。临床服务与非临床服务和对退伍军人的支持一起发展，目的是帮助退伍军人适当地重新融入社会，近年来，参与式剧院越来越多地被动员起来，作为帮助退伍军人从创伤和伤害中“恢复”的一种方式。除了简单的恢复机制之外，这些军事表演项目和其他文化形式一样，已经成为向接受的公众传播战争故事的一种流行形式。只要看看军事戏剧项目的成功，比如英国皇家军团的《查理F的两个世界》，它获得了享有声望的大赦国际言论自由奖，以及劳拉·阿里亚斯的《雷区》，它在第三年继续在世界各地巡回演出，就会发现公众对战争和冲突的生活经历有很大的兴趣。探索这些生活经历的创造性和戏剧性的方法有很大的潜力，可以帮助公众批判性地思考战争对社区和个人的各种影响。然而，我们继续在这些项目和表演中看到的是男性英雄士兵的特权，以及空间上“遥远”战争的形象。在这些叙述中，军事伙伴和家庭的生活经历很少被给予一个平台，更不用说中心了，这意味着可能发生冲突的家庭和亲密场所不在谈话中。尽管长期以来一直承认家庭在维护军事实践和价值观方面发挥着不可或缺的作用，但这种对军人妻子的边缘化进一步反映在《武装部队公约》中对军人家庭的“口头服务”上。与这些关于战争性质和地点的男性化叙事不同，本研究将从军人妻子的角度探索“冲突”，这不仅发生在遥远的战场上，也发生在亲密的家庭空间和个人关系中。它将使用来自《被压迫的剧院》、《论坛剧院》和《欲望的彩虹》的戏剧技巧，这些技巧侧重于动员戏剧来探索冲突和解决方案，帮助我们以不同的方式思考冲突和部署对军人家庭的真实生活影响。研究表明，创造性表演团体和项目在赋予军人妻子和女退伍军人权力和发言权方面具有很大的价值。拟议的项目将扩展这项研究，并探索参与式社区戏剧如何不仅赋予军人配偶权力，而且改变我们在政治地理上处理“冲突”的方式。本项目的研究问题如下：1)在研究武装冲突的生活影响时，戏剧如何帮助将军人妻子的作用和意义集中起来？2)对军人妻子的创造性研究如何帮助我们理解“冲突”是一种渗透在亲密和家庭空间中的流动的暴力综合体？3)在批判军事研究中，论坛戏剧作为方法能做什么其他方法做不到的事情？该项目的长期目标是通过戏剧表演和问答来帮助塑造公众对“战争”空间和后果的辩论，并帮助塑造国防部对军人家庭的支持。