Between man and machine: masculinities, technologies and spatiality in contemporary American war fiction

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

'We found a Yemeni passport on him, and a camera in the grass. It was still recording.' Thus ends Brian Van Reet's 2017 novel Spoils, in which the camera emerges as the resilient main character, outlasting the human lying dead nearby. 9/11 and the War on Terror saw technological advances which have radically changed modern warfare. Through de-centering the human, technology increasingly replaces man as the primary actor in conflict. Where, then, does this leave contemporary military masculinity, which has for so long been predicated on violent intimacy in war? This thesis interrogates the representation of American military masculinities alongside technological advancements in works of literature, graphic novel, film and video game. In examining the relationship between warrior and civilian masculinities, and the ways in which warrior masculinity is shaped by weaponry and telecommunications, it considers the extent to which a new American masculinity emerges from the space negotiated by twenty-first century man's relation to technology.Following an Introduction that maps representations of masculinities in war literature from the mid-twentieth century to 9/11, Chapter One considers the parameters of contemporary military masculinity. Drawing upon Connell (1987), it reads texts on the War on Terror in terms of a hegemonic 'warrior' masculinity. Like civilian masculinities, military masculinities are regularly redefined by shifting discourse on gender, sexuality, race and trauma - exemplified in the 2010 repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy and the 2013 repeal of the Combat Exclusion Policy, permitting female soldiers to serve in front line combat. Nevertheless, warrior masculinity evolves uniquely, being heavily moulded by violence, technologies and state policing of the body. Chapter Two then considers the female soldier's performance of masculinity in Lioness (dir. McLagan and Sommers, 2008), the navigation of black military masculinity in Hold it til it Hurts (Johnson, 2012) and the negotiation of trauma in The Yellow Birds (Powers, 2013). Together, these chapters question whether Connell's model of hegemonic masculinity applies to the combat zone in a way that has been outgrown by more contemporary understandings of civilian male identity.The War on Terror is a highly de-personalised war which not only largely removes any hand-to-hand combat through long range weapons technology, as seen in the Gulf War (1990-91), but also removes focus from any singularly identifiable opponent, instead targeting the broader notion of 'terror'. This places the negotiation of space at the heart of modern combat zones. Chapter Three interrogates how warrior masculinity is manipulated through the navigation of space in The Hurt Locker (dir. Bigelow, 2008), Fobbit (Abrams, 2012) and The Sheriff of Babylon (King and Gerads, 2015). Supported by post-humanist critical theory, particularly the work of Braidotti (2013) and a re-appraisal of Haraway's cyborg (1984), this chapter considers how the body's spatial relation to weapons technology might prove a soldier's worthiness as a masculine subject. Chapter Four considers the role of telecommunications in shaping the relationship between modern warfare and masculinities in Spoils (Van Reet, 2017), War Porn (Scranton, 2016), Only the Dead (Ware, 2015) and the video game series, Call of Duty (2003-present). The communication of images through the camera, the internet and the games console (and their literary representations) suggests a new dimension to the spatiality discussed in Chapter Two by incorporating the reader, viewer or player into the narrative. This chapter navigates the divide between the textual representation of the telecommunicated image and the telecommunicated image itself, considering how the distinction between representation and reality is complicated in a way which permits a new articulation of masculinity to emerge.