Modern Conflict and the Senses: Killer instincts?

Description

Modern Conflict and the Senses investigates the sensual worlds created by modern war, focusing on the sensorial responses embodied in and provoked by the materiality of conflict and its aftermath. The volume positions the industrialized nature of twentieth-century war as a unique cultural phenomenon, in possession of a material and psychological intensity that embodies the extremes of human behaviour, from total economic mobilization to the unbearable sadness of individual loss. Adopting a coherent and integrated hybrid approach to the complexities of modern conflict, the book considers issues of memory, identity, and emotion through wartime experiences of tangible sensations and bodily requirements. This comprehensive and interdisciplinary collection draws upon archaeology, anthropology, military and cultural history, art history, cultural geography, and museum and heritage studies in order to revitalize our understandings of the role of the senses in conflict. Modern Conflict and the Senses- Front Cover Modern Conflict and the Senses Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of figures Notes on contributors Foreword: the engagement of the senses Notes References Introduction Notes References PART I: Sensual landscapes Chapter 1: Sensing war: concept and space in the Imperial War Museum’s First World War Galleries A war sensed Transforming IWM London Concept and space A sense of history A First World War sense-scape The viscerality of artefacts Conclusion Notes References Chapter 2: Materiality, space and distance in the First World War The front line The home front Between two worlds Note References Chapter 3: Assaulting the senses: life and landscape beneath the Western Front The subterranean sensorium Classification and analysis of First World War subterranean sensorial landscapes Category A: Trenches, shell holes, mine craters and funk holes Category B: Dugouts, souterraines and subways Category C: Fighting tunnel systems Notes References Chapter 4: The scent of snow at Punta Linke: First World War sites as sense-scapes, Trentino, Italy The White War The Punta Linke Project Archaeology and the senses Modern conflict archaeology and the senses Using senses to ‘perceive’ and ‘feel’ the war at Punta Linke Memory lost? Smell! Museum as smellscape Acknowledgments Notes References Chapter 5: Sensorial engagement in tourism experiences on the Western Front The historical development of the senses and the ‘the privileging of the eye’ Sensual engagement and heritage interpretation The café-museum: a tactile setting Commemoration: cemeteries, memorials and ceremonies The landscape The ‘taste-less’ Western Front Conclusion Notes References Chapter 6: ‘Dead air’: the acoustic of war and peace – creative interpretations of the sounds of conflict and remembrance Jonty Semper and the sounds of silence Katie Davies and invisible borders Francis Alÿs and the geometry of sound Conclusion Acknowledgements Notes References Chapter 7: Moaning Minnie and the Doodlebugs: soundscapes of air warfare in Second World War Britain Introduction Britain at war Soundscapes and stories Soundscapes of air warfare ‘Moaning Minnie’ the air raid siren Aero engines Guns and bombs V1 missiles Discussion Acknowledgements References Chapter 8: The Cave Mouth: listening to sound and voice in Okinawan war memory Notes References Chapter 9: Emplacing the Italian Resistance: the dystopian fight against Fascism and Nazism (1943–1945) Reinstating the senses in a messy battlefield: the vibrant places of the Italian Resistance They lost their landscapes, and then lost their way The loss of the senses: displacement and blindness Final considerations References PART II: Sensing bodies Chapter 10: Odour and ethnicity: Americans and Japanese in the Second World War Analytical framework: olfaction and ethnicity Context: Japanese and American racism and Nisei soldiers in the US Army Concluding comments References Chapter 11: Ingestion and digestion on the Western Front Acknowledgements Primary Sources Note References Chapter 12: Trench crap: excremental aspects of the First World War Primary Sources: Notes References Chapter 13: Sense and sensibility: the power of print in post-war recuperation Rest and recovery Reconnecting and recreation Thanksgiving, and doughnuts Conclusion: sensory presence/sensory absence Acknowledgements Notes References Chapter 14: The ‘white death’: thirst and water in the Chaco War The Chaco and its war Sensing the Chaco The ‘white death’ Comforting the senses Concluding comments References Chapter 15: Jan Karski, from eye witness to moral witness: what to do with your senses The eye witness: ‘Here is the Jeremiad of Western Civilization, realistic, appalling’ ‘Statistics don’t bleed’: from eye witness to moral witness A new man: toward a self-judaization Conclusion Notes References Chapter 16: The sensory signature of being an airman in a Second World War Lancaster bomber Lancaster bomber: a Second World War aeroplane Lancaster bomber: tangible heritage Sensory archaeology and archaeological theory: coming into being Lancaster aircrew Haptic world Dressing for the task Operational senses Realities of air combat Memory Bomber Command memorial Participatory anthropology: inside a Lancaster bomber Observations Acknowledgements Notes References Chapter 17: Sounds of horror: sensorial experiences of a Gestapo prison, Begunje (Slovenia) The Gestapo prison in Begunje Arrival, accommodation and life in prison Interrogations, tortures and executions Graffiti – the mirror of suffering Notes References Chapter 18: The uninvited guests who outstayed their welcome: the ghosts of war in the Channel Islands The heritage of the German Occupation Powerful bunkers Occupation ghosts The recent phenomenon of ‘slave worker’ ghosts Letting go of the ghosts of place? Conclusion Note References Chapter 19: Sensory deprivation during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923): female political prisoners at Kilmainhan Gaol, Dublin Gendered experiences of political imprisonment A short history of Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin Locating sensory experiences of place: autograph books and graffiti Sensory experiences of Kilmainham Gaol during the Irish Civil War Conclusion Acknowledgements Primary Sources Note References PART III: Sensorial objects Chapter 20: Sensing the sepoy: objects, letters and songs of Indian Soldiers, 1914–1918 Indian soldiers on the Western Front Touching things Letters Songs Acknowledgements Notes References Chapter 21: War with flowers: the paintings of Albert Heim and the German sensory experience of the Somme, 1914–1916 Life at the Front Under attack The enemy Acknowledgements Primary Sources Websites Film References Chapter 22: The senses: battlefield exploration, drawing and sculpture Chalk and clay War clichés The café-museums Notes References Chapter 23: War, memory and the senses in the Imperial War Museum London, 1920–2014 Personal sensory memories Cultural sensory memories Conclusion Notes References Afterword: war on the senses References Index