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The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body

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The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Masters Theses Graduate School 8-2006 Sufferings Which Have No Tongue: The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body Jason Lewis Simms University of Tennessee, Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Simms, Jason Lewis, "Sufferings Which Have No Tongue: The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 2006. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/4497 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Jason Lewis Simms entitled "Sufferings Which Have No Tongue: The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in Anthropology. Janice Harper, Major Professor We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: Elizabeth Sutherland, David Anderson Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Jason Lewis Simms entitled "Sufferings Which Have No Tongue: The Enculturation of War, Trauma, and the Disappearing Body." I have examined the final paper copy of this thesis for form and · content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillmentof the requirements forthe degree of Master of Arts, with a major in Anthropology. -- We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance: U.&f�i<R½ .24U� E��eth Sutherland �� David Anderson SUFFERINGS WHICH HAVE NO TONGUE: THE ENCULTURA TION OF WAR, TRAUMA, AND THE DISAPPEARING BODY A Thesis Presented for the Master of Arts Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jason Lewis Simms August 2006 11 Copyright © 2006 by Jason Lewis Simms All rights reserved. 111 DEDICATION Iuliae. Tu es cordi mihi, mea uxor, nunc et semper. Et patri: cognosces veritatem et veritas te liberabit. Matrimeae etiam, cum amore. I have to tell you that, since last we met, I have endured a wrong so great and strange, That neither life nor death can give me rest. Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue. -Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Cenci, act III, scene I: 155-159) There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warningvoice to generations yet to come. I l.ook upon war with horror. -William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), U.S. General. From a speech, Columbus, Ohio, August 11, 1880 IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone who helped me to complete my Master of Arts degree. First, I want to thank Dr. Janice Harper for her willingness to serve as my committee chair. To her I owe a deep debt of gratitude for her assistance in selecting the topic, guiding my research, and offeringme significantencouragement along the way. It is because of her that I have a clearer path before me. Next, I want to thank Dr. Elizabeth Sutherland for her years of support, both academically and personally, and for her willingness to serve on my committee. Also, her editorial skills were invaluable during this process; her attention to detail made this text focused, intelligible, and worthy of being called a thesis. In truth, however, it is impossible to show my appreciation fully to her, so I will say only this: gratias maximas tibi ago. In addition, I wish to thank Dr. David Anderson. His decision to serve on my committee in light of his other students and duties is something for which I will always be grateful. He never wavered in his support of my ideas, and for that I am very appreciative. Once again I must give thanks to Melissa Hargove. She was my introduction to anthropology almost five years ago, and her impassioned teaching and love of the discipline startedme down this road. She refusedto accept the status quo, and because of her I realized not only that change was necessary, but also that it was possible. I am also indebted to my fellow students at the University of Tennessee, many of whom read various parts of this thesis and offered invaluable comments and advice. I V offer thanks to Angela Dautartas, Miriam Soto, Johnathan Baker, Courtney Eleazer, Shane Miller, Dale Darby, Erin Eldridge, and anyone else who provided moral or technical support with this work. Finally, and perhaps most of all, I must thank my father and uncle. Were it not for that fateful conversation in August 2004, none of this would have happened. To my father: your words were the unknowing catalyst that drove me for the last two years, and you showed me the necessity of this work. May this thesis say to you what I could not. And to Bill: you asked what they teach in cultural anthropology at the University of Tennessee, and I can now say, here it is. Vl ABSTRACT Warfare has always been vital to the state for a number of reasons. Those in power have a vested interest in maintaining control over not only war itself, but also informationrelated to the conflict. One way they accomplish this is by making decisions that restrict, alter, tone-down, or otherwise change content related to human bodies in times of conflict that is meant for widespread dissemination through mainstream media and official government or military reporting. An extreme implementation of this power can makes bodies disappear. Drawing on the work of Gusterson (2004), Ehrenreich (1997), Sontag (2003), Chomsky (2002), Scott (1990), Clastres (1974), Foucault (1977), and several others, I argue that this "symbolic disappearance" of the body in Western military contexts is an example of state power exercised to help sustain a hegemonic authority structure. This power can result in several negative consequences for citizens, soldiers, and veterans of the nation-state, as well as for foreign residents and soldiers affected by military actions. vu TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .. 1 Chapter One: The State, Warfare,Media, and Resistance................................. 11 Chapter Two: Bodies in Print and Broadcast Media....................................... 33 Chapter Three: The Wounded................................................................. 70 Conclusion .. .. .. 98 List of References ............................................................................... 107 Vita ................................................................................................ 118 1 Introduction War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of lifeand death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied. -Sun Tzu In the November 2005 edition of Mcaim magazine, journalist Kathy Dobie wrote an article in which she discusses the difficult economic and social situations that soldiers returning from the War on Terror face when they arrive home. She focuses on the tremendous psychological stress from which many veterans suffer and the manifestations of such stress, which may include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, substance abuse, violence, homelessness, unemployment, or suicide. She interviews several recent veterans, who describe the daily horrors they faced while deployed, as well as their dismay at returning to a country without the skills and support needed to be reintegrated into society and to succeed in the civilian world. In addition, she highlights several organizations that are trying to bring national attention to these difficulties and interviews some of their key members. Her bottom line is that returning veterans have, in the last fifty years, largely been neglected by the very country and people they served. Upon discharge from military service, she writes (108), many soldiers "just seem to disappear." Disappearing bodies are, in a large sense, the topic of this work. Bodies can vanish in a number of ways, of course, both figuratively and literally. My focus, however, is the symbolic loss of the body within several contexts (although primarily the military), which results from the censorship (voluntary and otherwise), language, and rhetorical strategies employed in the reporting from both military and civilian sources 2 about the human cost of war. Such tactics - when used to craft the news that shapes, drives, and directs public discourse on war and violence - can result in incomplete, inaccurate, or altered reporting. Reporting of this sort provides an unrealistic account of military actions throughout the world to a majority of the population. This obscured understanding of the realities of conflict can remove legitimacy from the experiences of those individuals and groups, such as soldiers, victims of systematic violence, wounded veterans, and refugees, who witnessed or endured horrors and atrocities firsthand. I argue that the symbolic disappearance of the body in various contexts is an example of state power exercised to help sustain a hegemonic authority structure. From the earliest days of modern wartime journalism, Western
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