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

我们在他身上发现了一本也门护照，草丛中还有一台相机。相机还在录制中。布莱恩·范·里特2017年的小说《掠夺》就这样结束了，在这部小说中，摄像机以坚韧的主人公的身份出现，比躺在附近的死人活得更久。9/11和反恐战争见证了技术的进步，从根本上改变了现代战争。通过以人为中心，技术越来越多地取代人成为冲突中的主要参与者。那么，这会把当代军人的男子气概留在哪里呢？长期以来，这种男子气概一直建立在战争中的暴力亲密关系上。本论文探讨了在文学、图文小说、电影和电子游戏作品中，随着技术的进步，美国军人男子气概的表现。在研究战士和平民男子气概之间的关系，以及武器和电信塑造战士气概的方式时，它考虑了新的美国男子气概从21世纪人类与技术的关系所协商的空间中出现的程度。在介绍了从20世纪中期到9/11战争文学中男性气概的表现之后，第一章考虑了当代军事男子气概的参数。借鉴康奈尔(1987)，它阅读关于反恐战争的文本，以霸权的“勇士”的男性气概为基础。与平民男子气概一样，军人的男子气概也经常被重新定义，因为人们对性别、性、种族和创伤的讨论发生了变化--比如2010年废除了《不要问，不要说》政策，2013年废除了《战斗排斥政策》，允许女兵在前线作战。然而，勇士的男子汉气概是独一无二的，在很大程度上受到暴力、技术和国家治安的影响。第二章分析了《狮女》中女兵男子气概的表现。麦克拉根和萨默斯，2008)，黑人军人男子气概的导航，直到它受到伤害(约翰逊，2012)，以及《黄鸟》中的创伤谈判(Power，2013)。总而言之，这些章节质疑康奈尔的霸权男子气概模式是否适用于战区，这种模式已经被当代对平民男性身份的理解所超越。反恐战争是一场高度去个人化的战争，不仅像海湾战争(1990-91年)那样，在很大程度上消除了通过远程武器技术进行的肉搏，而且也从任何单一可识别的对手身上转移了注意力，转而针对更广泛的“恐怖”概念。这将太空谈判置于现代战区的核心。第三章询问了战士的男子气概是如何通过在《拆弹部队》中的空间导航来操纵的(目录。Bigelow，2008)，Fobbit(艾布拉姆斯，2012)和巴比伦警长(King and Gerads，2015)。在后人文主义批评理论的支持下，特别是Braidotti(2013)的工作和对Haraway的半机械人(1984)的重新评估，本章考虑了身体与武器技术的空间关系如何证明士兵作为男性主体的价值。第四章在《战利品》(Van Reet，2017)、《战争色情》(Scranton，2016)、《只有死者》(Only the Dead，Ware，2015)和电子游戏系列《使命召唤》(Call of Duty，2003-至今)中探讨了电信在塑造现代战争与男子汉气概之间的关系中所扮演的角色。通过相机、互联网和游戏控制台(以及它们的文学表现形式)进行的图像交流，通过将读者、观众或玩家纳入叙事，为第二章讨论的空间性提供了一个新的维度。这一章探索了电信图像的文本表现和电信图像本身之间的区别，考虑到表现和现实之间的区别是如何复杂的，从而允许出现一种新的男性气概的表达。

'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.