Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800-2020

在战争中杀人的能力通常被归因于使敌人低于人类的宣传，或者归因于使敌人处于更舒适距离的技术。然而，这个项目追踪了另一种对敌人的感觉轨迹，就像威尔弗雷德·欧文（Wilfred Owen）的名言所说的那样，敌人是一个“陌生的朋友”，在这个过程中，敌意迅速转化为同胞的感觉。正如欧文的作品所表明的，以及大量其他士兵的作品所证实的那样，与敌人的亲密关系不一定是杀死敌人的障碍。探索在文学（包括雪莱、托尔斯泰、哈代、吉卜林、欧文、托马斯、琼斯、道格拉斯、奥布莱恩、帕克）、哲学和1800年至今的士兵生活写作中与敌人的相遇，这个项目试图探索通过宣布对敌人的感情来挑战和实现军国主义的工作范围。这项研究为士兵的情绪和动机提供了新的理解，并对战争暴力的基本原理（军事和平民）有了更广泛的见解，并关注了与敌人的关系在文化上被部署的方式，使我们对战争感觉更好或更糟。它考虑哪些敌人可以成为熟悉的，哪些是其他的，调查国家、种族、宗教和文化的分界线。在这样做的过程中，该项目提出了我们当代关于友好、敌意、熟悉和差异性的本质的紧迫问题。与敌人的关系是思考战争伦理的核心，从圣奥古斯丁（St Augustine）、克劳塞维茨（Clausewitz）、鲍德里亚（Baudrillard）到巴特勒（Butler）等形形色色的理论家，都在关注对立双方在决定战争合法性方面的比例、接近性和相互不稳定性。这个项目利用文学档案来思考立法的核心问题，将战争暴力控制在可容忍的范围内：当最终结果相似时，人们被杀，为了承认或否认敌人的人性而杀戮是更好的吗？远距离杀人的技术是否会减少这种杀戮的情感代价？该项目采用比较细读的人文方法、历史语境化以及性别和情感研究的理论方法，展示了19世纪的文本提供的各种答案如何阐明了我们现在的仇外心理、反叛乱行动和无人机主导的战略。这项研究将由一个国际指导委员会提供信息，为PI的英国研究背景带来专业知识的补充，在四个主要冲突的“另一边”——拿破仑战争、克里米亚战争、南非战争和第一次世界大战。它将寻求军事史的新方法，超越单一的国家重点，提出更多的对话和国际方法的关键军事研究。该项目将由士兵和退伍军人的焦点小组塑造，并将与获奖慈善机构Re-Live合作，考虑对敌人的感觉与退伍军人心理健康之间的关系。Re-Live将持续举办一系列的12个生活故事研讨会和表演，将退伍军人、他们的家人和社区的经历置于项目的中心。与主要军事博物馆的合作将告知“另一方”的策划方式，研究将在军事医学博物馆和帝国战争博物馆的新画廊中使用。一系列的活动和在线材料将吸引公众参与讨论敌人的呈现所做的文化工作。

The ability to kill in war has often been attributed to propaganda that has made the enemy subhuman, or to technology which has placed the enemy at a more comfortable distance. This project, however, traces an alternative trajectory of feeling for the enemy as a 'strange friend' as Wilfred Owen famously put it, in which enmity is swiftly transformed into forms of fellow feeling. As Owen's work suggests, and a wealth of other soldier writings confirm, intimacy with the enemy is not necessarily a barrier to killing him. Exploring encounters with the enemy in literature (including Shelley, Tolstoy, Hardy, Kipling, Owen, Thomas, Jones, Douglas, O'Brien, Parker), philosophy, and soldiers' life writings from 1800-now, this project seeks to explore the range of work done by announcements of feeling for the enemy both to challenge and enable militarism. This research offers new understandings of soldiers' emotions and motivations, and wider insights into rationales - military and civilian - for war violence, attending to the ways in which relationships with the enemy have been culturally deployed to make us feel better or worse about war. It considers which enemies can become familiar and which are held as other, investigating dividing lines of nation, race, religion, and culture. In so doing the project asks questions pressing for our contemporary moment about the nature of amity, enmity, familiarity and otherness. The relationship with the enemy is at the heart of thinking about the ethics of war, with theorists as diverse as St Augustine, Clausewitz, Baudrillard, and Butler, concerned with proportion, proximity and mutual precarity in the positions of opposing sides in determining the legitimacy of war. This project draws on literary archives to consider questions central to legislation to bring war violence within tolerable limits: Is it better to kill in recognition or denial of the humanity of one's enemy, when the end result is similar, people are killed? Do technologies for killing at distance reduce the emotional toll of that killing? The project uses humanities methods of comparative close reading, historical contextualisation and theoretical approaches from gender and emotion studies, showing how the various answers proffered by long-nineteenth century texts illuminate our present of xenophobia, counter-insurgency operations, and drone dominated strategy.This research will be informed by an international steering committee, bringing expertise complementary to the PI's British studies background, on the 'other' side(s) of the four major conflicts of focus - Napoleonic, Crimean, South African and First World Wars. It will seek new methodologies for military history, extending beyond a single country of focus to suggest more dialogic and international methods of critical military studies.The project will be shaped by focus groups with soldiers and veterans, and will work with award winning charity Re-Live to consider the relationships between feeling for the enemy and veterans' mental health. A sustained series of 12 Life Story workshops and performance with Re-Live will place the experiences of veterans, their families and communities at the project's centre. Partnerships with leading military museums will inform the way in which the 'other' side is curated, with the research used in new galleries at Military Medical Museum and Imperial War Museum. A series of events and online materials will engage the public with debates about the cultural work done by the presentation of the enemy.