disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 13 Pangaea Article 8 4-15-2004 Global Wars and Writing Warrior Culture: disClosure interviews Anthony Swofford Anna Froula University of Kentucky Danny Mayer University of Kentucky Jonathan Vincent University of Kentucky Keith Woodward University of Arizona DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.13.08 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the English Language and Literature Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Froula, Anna; Mayer, Danny; Vincent, Jonathan; and Woodward, Keith (2004) "Global Wars and Writing Warrior Culture: disClosure interviews Anthony Swofford," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 13 , Article 8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.13.08 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol13/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] Durlabh Singh nr a Froula, Danny Mayer, Jonathan Vincent, and Sonnet Two ei h Woodward h bal Wars and Writing Warrior Culture: i ~ Closure interviews Anthony Swofford Would not I carry my rugged pride Anthony Swofford is Assistant Professor of When element to element will mingle and reside English at Saint Mary's College of California. In perfumed consummati on of interstellar space J li fi r t book, Jarhead: A Marine 's Chronicle of In a new planet cast out of Brahama's rage the Gulf War and Other Ball/es, is a memoir For ever wishing my nibbled pen could trace detailing his experiences as a marine sniper dur­ A line of haughty verse to silence the deadly state ing and after the first Gul f War. Released on the The world's affairs And all its cloud clapped might eve of the second war in the Gul f, the book But ends in poor surrender shorn of man' s pride received considerable critical attention and Swof­ Shorn of all honour when our tattered rags do show ford appeared in several interviews with the pop­ The imprints of tempters all their dishonest row ular press during the spring of 2003. During the Then we hate to touch our mortgaged fl esh and bone summer of 2003, disC/osure was fortunate to When souls are slaughtered in church yards of rhone catch Swofford giving a reading from Jarhead at It might have been better to expl ore salient venues Lexington' s Joseph Beth Bookstore. After sev­ The spirit of dark waters or some sealed avenues. eral hours of gentle pleading Swofford agreed to a phone interview later that month. In his in terview with disClosure, Swofford discus cs the U.S. wars in the Gulf in the contexts of the emergence of globalization the transfor­ mations of nations and national identities and the changing social and political characteristics of the soldier. dC: Your connection with this issue's theme·- globalization- seem almost intuitive. You fought in and wrote on the first Gulf War. Have you given much thought to the way your work addresses any sorts of global as opposed to nati onal concerns? AS: When a writer in thi century decides to write about war, the issue is in tantly global. That's largely a result of the Gulf War move­ ments toward globalizing warfare. This happened 94 Pangaea 95 Froula, Mayer, Vincent, and Woodward disclosure interviews Anthony Swofford on the surface in terms of the supposed coalition that was fighting GW I in the regalia of combat is the result. And the current administration will and also throughout the nineties with America using the United Nations. provide the actors. But you need not have fought wars in order to run the Of course in this last war we saw a total collapse of that. So in terms of country or to understand war. shared interests and shared responsibility there was a failure in terms of the practical nature of the war but it was obviously a global concern. dC: It seemed that you distinguished, for the reader, two different types of war machines in Jarhead. There is the state machine, with this desire dC: What relation does the present "Global War on Terror" have to for oil and military pre ence in Saudi Arabia and then there are the Jar­ your text? Particularly in the context of nationalism, the legitimating hcad who de ire, in your words to "fight rape, war pillage, bum." discourses seem to have altered, downplaying nation and emphasizing While the state desire arc fulfilled the US secures oil, establishes a conceptions of struggles for global peace. The e arc, of cour e, the Middle .. a. t presence that they're till trying to further today - the same words of the politicians. Can you speculate about the possible changing cannot be sa id for those desires of the Jarhead . There is little fighting in contexts for the Jarhead and how this (sub)culture might respond to your book, there i only a single rape (a simulated platoon gang-bang on them? a male platoon member), and because of newer technological military apparatu , the mi sile take care of the pillaging and the burning. Does AS: The Jarhead is changed by these outside forces that arc attempting the po t-war alienation grow out of the state's exploitation of the Jar­ to explode his reason for being and also to further legitimize his train­ head' particular pornographic desire for war? ing; he's always been different from the normal 18 year old kid. The Jarhead is an 18 year old kid who needs wants must go kill, which is not A : What occur in the infantry, in tep by step fashion, is a young, normal. So if we say that the Jarhead's role in the world i no longer just eighteen year-old, generally male, person is indoctrinated into a lifestyle about protecting America, which is a domestic fringe culture, but forc­ that i most likely contrary to what he is used to. The insertion of a psy­ ing or attempting to usher in some era of global peace, then what's chotic dream occur , and that psychotic dream involves the desire to occurring is an attempt to make the Jarhcad, and his warrior cu lture, fight, rape, war, pi II age, burn. When the Jarhcad doc n 't, in combat, more important and omnipresent. take part in the fighting, the raping, the pillaging, the burning, he has been set up for a ick atisfaction that never occur . He is then quite dC: What do you think of the role of actually being in the war as aware, po t-war certainly, of the fact that he is not normal because of opposed to people who haven 't been to war - we're thinking in li ght of that psychotic dream that he took part in and wa interested in. And that presidential elections now that seem to hinge upon military commanders causes alienation and lonclincs . entering into the democratic race and having immediate legitimacy because they have been in the military. What is it that is so valuable in dC: What about the state' role in this? It ecms that the tate gives you being-there for an American society? the ability to have those dream and in some instance , promotes those dreams as well. AS: This ties in to the question about the change of the Jarhcad in terms of global security policy rather than nationalist security policy. When a AS: Absolutely. The state, in the form of the department of defense country is at war in at least a few places at once it might be that many particularly in the form of the recruiter who ells the young civilian kid people need some sort of warrior figure- they need, they desire, a com­ on the lifestyle, on the dream, is totally implicated in forcing this new mander-in-chief and not just a president. And of course that's being sold twisted morality on the young men, a world where it's okay to want to to them because war is a product, the second oldest product. Fighting kill people and de troy Ii fcstyle and even form of government. the global war on terror, which has no fronts and is everywhere at once, can cause a moral sickness, and this desire for a warrior leader dressed dC: What sorts of benefits did you see or interaction did you have as a 96 Pangaea disC/osure 13 97 Froula, Mayer, Vincent, and Woodward disClosure interviews Anthony Swofford Jarhead, from a larger coalition in the Gulf War and how docs that seem bigger shoes who are making the bigger money, as well as political to compare to the current climate of unilateralism surrounding the powers attempting to gain power in the world at the national and inter­ present war in Iraq? Was there a lot of interaction between and amongst national levels. I would argue that a defeatist attitude toward the inevita­ these different militaries? bility of the big shoes getting their way is not necessarily anti- subvcr ivc. Truth is subversive. To narrate the reality of the warriors' AS: We did a bit of training with the Brits and some Egyptian army training and institutionalized desires is subversive. The memoirist's task guys. The war was fought by the American that time ju ta it i this is to, a an artist, decide what from real life must survive in the narrative time. But I think what multilateral ism offers is a different flag to fly Ii fc of the book.