UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Soldiers performing/performing soldiers : spectacular catharsis, perpetual rehearsal, and theatricality in the US infantry Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/309302cw Author Gill, Zachary Whitman Publication Date 2009 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Soldiers Performing/Performing Soldiers: Spectacular Catharsis, Perpetual Rehearsal, and Theatricality in the US Infantry A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre By Zachary Whitman Gill Committee in charge: Professor Anthony Kubiak, Chair Professor Jorge Huerta Professor Jorge Mariscal Professor John Rouse Professor Janet Smarr 2009 Copyright 2009 Zachary Whitman Gill All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Zachary Whitman Gill is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego University of California, Irvine 2009 iii DEDICATION To Catie, my love and my support, without whom I would never have made it and to whom I devote my life iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page.....................................................................................................................iii Dedication............................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents..................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................vi Vita......................................................................................................................................vii Abstract..............................................................................................................................viii Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: “Awe and Pity,” “Shock and Awe”: Spectacular Catharsis in the Art of War……………………………………………………………………………………….16 Chapter 2: Virtual and Actual Combats: Theatricality in Contemporary US Infantry Training ……………………..………………………….................................................. 71 Chapter 3: Rehearsing the War Away: Perpetual Warrior Training in Contemporary Infantry Policy…………………………………….........................................................117 Chapter 4: Everything You Saw and Everything You Did: The Burden of Perpetual Rehearsal……………………………………………………..........................................166 Conclusion: Bearing Witness to an Unrecoverable Truth: Veteran Theatre as Testimony.............................................................................................................……...208 Works Cited....................................................................... .............................................239 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to the faculty of the UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance, and the UCI Department of Drama. I am especially grateful to my chair, Anthony Kubiak for providing the perfect amount of guidance, support, and advice. I am also forever indebted to Jorge Huerta, for endless help, for being my co-teacher and mentor, and for bringing such joy to it all. My committee, John Rouse, Janet Smarr, and Jorge Mariscal have all been very valuable to my growth as a scholar and completion of my degree. I would also like to thank Ted and Adele Shank for their willingness to allow me to manage TheatreForum and provide employment for me when I needed it most. I am grateful to my fellow PhD students, candidates, and recent graduates for their support, guidance, empathy, and friendship. I would not have been able to do any of this without you. Thank you Ashley, Summer, Heather, Michael, Rai, Aimee, Phil, Rana, Jade, Grace, Fan, Terry, Laura, Maiya, Naysan, Heather, and Karen. Finally, Mom, Molly, Dad, Charlotte, and Stu have all constantly supported and guided me through the many phases, good and bad, of being a graduate student and living in San Diego. And Catie, you have overseen every step of my journey and shaped my teaching, writing, research, and thinking. Thank you for everything. I can never hope to express how much you and your love mean to me. vi VITA 2002 B.S., Bates College 2002-2009 Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Theatre and Dance, University of California, San Diego 2009 Associate Instructor, Dept. of Theatre and Dance University of California, San Diego 2009 Lecturer, Dept. of Theatre and Dance University of California, San Diego 2009 Ph.D., University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Rehearsing the War Away: Perpetual Warrior Training in Contemporary U.S. Army Policy.” TDR 53.3 (T203 2009). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Theatre and Performance Studies in Military History and Theory Professor Anthony Kubiak, University of California, Irvine Studies in Chicano Theatre: Professor Jorge Huerta, University of California, San Diego Studies in Performance Theory: Professor John Rouse, University of California, San Diego vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Soldiers Performing/Performing Soldiers: Spectacular Catharsis, Perpetual Rehearsal, and Theatricality in the US Infantry By Zachary Whitman Gill Doctor of Philosophy in Drama and Theatre University of California, San Diego, 2009 University of California, Irvine, 2009 Professor Anthony Kubiak, Chair The United States at the infancy of the twenty first century is in the midst of an era of unprecedented military performance seeming to intentionally blur and collapse the boundaries between training and actual combat by means of an increasing spectacularity in the theorization and execution of military strategy. Combining the lenses of theater and performance with theories of military history and warfare, trauma, and the workings of power, this dissertation seeks to lay bare the ways in which performance, as both a system of power and knowledge and an expressive twice-behaved behavior, structures and drives warfare and weaves throughout contemporary US infantry theory. Infantry training, in an effort to contextualize the experience of warfare beforehand in training, attempts to identify, define, and prepare for the traumatic. But the extremity of warfare remains trauma, which by its very definition lies beyond the limits of existential reality, viii leaving training a doomed and fruitless attempt to voice the unspeakable that collapses the real into the virtual. Locating the roots of the government’s use of “Shock and Awe” via a genealogical approach, I situate current infantry practices within a history of military theory aimed at preventing cathartic responses to the spectacle of combat in soldiers. I then examine how the Army and Marine Corps uses training to craft flexible and adaptive warriors in training through a process of mimetically theatrical simulations and perpetual rehearsal driven by a systematic dedication to performative power. The remaining chapters approach the effect of military training from the perspective of theories of trauma, arguing that infantry training-as-combat—rehearsal staged as performance—forecloses the possibilities of grasping the full impact of what is seen and done; such a process leaves an experiential gap that magnifies the probability of repeated impossible confrontation with the originary missed event. I conclude by offering theater as a possibility for testimony, for fully recounting the victim-witness’s narrative and thereby overcoming trauma. This project thus levels a critical indictment of theatre, performance theory, and the military as structurally akin, experientially unimaginable, and existentially terrifying. ix Introduction I began this dissertation in the midst of escalating violence in Iraq. As the war spiraled into cruel and gory sectarian violence, the US military seemed helpless to stop the rash of improvised explosive devises targeting civilians and soldiers alike. The grisly news reports, constantly spun and respun by the pundits and talking heads and obfuscated by the Bush Administration, continued to dominate the airwaves and print media of the United States for much of the initial stages of my research. My intention at the time was to tap into the cultural cache afforded to the US serviceman and investigate the ways in which soldiers have appeared onstage—whether as characters, actors, playwrights, or mere references. By framing the historical in the present, I hoped to determine if the rash of plays and performances concerning war was particularly extraordinary or merely another manifestation of a history of complicity and antagonism between the theatrical and martial institutions. But as I pursued my line of inquiry, the more I noticed what seemed to be a martial attention to, even obsession with, identifying and controlling what could only be deemed the role of performance in directly affecting the outcome of battles. As I dug deeper, I uncovered more and more evidence that suggested that what at first appeared to be a recent phenomenon was, in fact, merely the most recent manifestation of a much longer history. Just as the tenor of the Iraq War shifted and the infantry hailed a new training and doctrine approach directly in line with this