Indoctrinated Incoherence an Institutional Theory of Traumatic Experience
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ Indoctrinated Incoherence An Institutional Theory of Traumatic Experience A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in POLITICS with an emphasis in SOCIOLOGY by James Beneda December 2017 The Dissertation of James Beneda is approved: _________________________________ Professor Ronnie Lipschutz, chair _________________________________ Professor Daniel Wirls _________________________________ Professor Karen Bassi _________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by James Beneda 2017 ii Table of Contents List of Figures .............................................................................................................. v Abstract ....................................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. viii Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 The ‘Problematic’ of Trauma ................................................................................... 8 Choosing Narratives of Trauma ............................................................................. 18 Politics and the Interpretation of Traumatic Experience ....................................... 30 Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................................ 40 Chapter One: An Institutional Theory of Traumatic Experience ........................ 50 Overview of Moral Injury ....................................................................................... 57 The Promise and Limits of Moral Injury Theory .................................................... 67 Psychological Virtue ............................................................................................... 76 Reading Moral Injury from the Psychological Paradigm ...................................... 80 An Institutional Theory of Traumatic Experience .................................................. 83 Moral Injury and the Phenomenology of Trauma .................................................. 91 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 103 Chapter Two: Moral Authority, Embodied Belief, and the Interpretation of Traumatic Experience ............................................................................................ 108 The Moral Authority of Institutions ...................................................................... 113 The Unit of Moral Analysis: Moral Action ........................................................... 123 Embodied Belief in Moral Authority ..................................................................... 127 Hysteretic Response .............................................................................................. 140 Moral Interpretation of Experience ...................................................................... 147 Chapter Three: Narrating the Anomic Condition of Soldiers and Veterans .... 160 The Anomic Condition .......................................................................................... 161 Anomic Narratives and the Experience of War .................................................... 168 The Primary Psychological Injury of Affective Distress ....................................... 182 Chapter Four: Narrating the Anomic Condition of Soldiers and Veterans (Continued) .............................................................................................................. 196 Betrayal by an Institution ...................................................................................... 204 Political Betrayal .................................................................................................. 213 Ideological Betrayal .............................................................................................. 225 The Sins of the Individual ..................................................................................... 236 Narrative Incoherence .......................................................................................... 249 Chapter Five: Military Indoctrination and the Soldier’s Relationship to Moral Authority ...................................................................................................... 253 iii The Necessity of Military Indoctrination .............................................................. 258 Military Discipline ................................................................................................ 272 Moral Authority and the Object of Discipline ...................................................... 281 Combat Motivation Sciences and Moral Authority of Comradeship .................... 294 Disentangling Military Necessity from Militarism ............................................... 310 Chapter Six: The American Military Tradition and the Institutional Imperative to Perpetuate It .................................................................................... 319 Origins of the American Military Tradition .......................................................... 324 The Antebellum Army ............................................................................................ 336 The Civil War to World War II ............................................................................. 350 The Army and World War II ................................................................................. 365 The Army and the Cold War ................................................................................. 381 History and Moral Authority ................................................................................ 404 Chapter Seven: Logical Flaws of the Army’s Moral Doctrine ........................... 406 The Military-Civilian ‘Culture Gap’ and the Army’s Identity Crisis ................... 411 The Soldier as Leader ........................................................................................... 423 The Soldier as a Person of Character ................................................................... 432 The Soldier as Warrior ......................................................................................... 447 The Fundamental Contradiction of Moral Doctrine: Selfless-Individualism ....... 464 Chapter Eight: The Valorization of Comradeship in American Militarism ..... 470 The Problematics of Patriotic Sacrifice and the Soldier’s Motivations ............... 473 A Contested Articulation of Military Brotherhood ............................................... 476 Historical Contexts and Reappropriated Articulations ........................................ 484 Configuring Comradeship in the War on Terrorism ............................................ 493 Postscript ................................................................................................................. 504 References ................................................................................................................ 512 iv List of Figures Figure 1. The cycle of hysteresis 144 v Abstract Indoctrinated Incoherence: An Institutional Theory of Traumatic Experience James Beneda Beginning from theories of psychological trauma as ‘moral injury’, this dissertation argues against established models that explain posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among war veterans as the inevitable result of exposure to violence. Instead, I argue the condition we recognize as trauma is the behavioral adaptation, following a crisis of belief, to life in anomic circumstances. Trauma’s cause is the inability of pre- existing moral beliefs to provide for the contextualization or justification of personal actions or the actions of others, resulting in the unsuccessful accommodation of morally challenging experiences. The resulting incoherence demands an interpretation of the situation as having been traumatic. Analyzing trauma requires an institutional approach that accounts for the history of the traumatic event within the broader context that gives the event meaning. My analysis begins with veterans’ accounts of wartime experience published as war novels. Close readings illustrate the genre’s critique of the institutions of war, including the persistent suggestion that trauma results when the moral authority of these institutions proves illusory. The dissertation then considers the US Army’s institutional values to locate potential points of moral failure that may be the source of trauma among recent veterans. This analysis of the ideal soldier’s moral expectations accounts for: processes by which the Army regulates individual vi behavior; institutionally sanctioned limits on moral decisionmaking; the influence of historical legacies on present practices; and the relative power and motives of various political interests in pursuing institutional change or continuity. I argue American soldiers sent to war in Iraq could not rely on their available moral beliefs for two primary reasons. First, there is a fundamental conflict between the moral demands of warfighting and the cultural values of democratic society. Second, the Army creates the conditions under which its soldiers are unable to reconcile the actions it demands of them and the ethos it provides. The idealist expectations of too many American soldiers