Rashid, M;
(2021)
‘Appropriate’ing grief: mothers, widows and the (un) grievability of military death.
NORMA
10.1080/18902138.2021.1985349.
(In press).
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Abstract
The article interrogates the grievability of military lives by studying female next of kin as subjects of the post-colonial Pakistan military and suggests that these non-masculine and non-military bodies act as a symbolic embodiment of grief associated with soldier death, and as its material benefactor. A study of their affective and material management, the article traces national and local commemorative practices of grief around soldier death instituted by the Pakistan Military during the War on Terror. Female bodies are conscripted in the war effort, as dependents whose destructive affect needs restraint and channelling into appropriate grief, and as vital resources whose excessive affect can be harnessed to express productive grief and support for unpopular war policy. Drawing on fieldwork in villages, analysis of military commemorations, and interviews with officers and female next of kin, the article traces the overwhelming sense of loss that refuses closure within militarised grieving rituals. It concludes that the surfeit of public and collective grief around military lives paradoxically renders these deaths ungrievable.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | ‘Appropriate’ing grief: mothers, widows and the (un) grievability of military death |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/18902138.2021.1985349 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2021.1985349 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. |
| Keywords: | Grievability; military commemoration; military wives/mothers; gender; war on terror; affect |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Social Research Institute |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142569 |
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