Class Notes 3-6: Perversion, Humiliation & Bodies Without Value
In his chapter "The Seduction of War," Hedges describes how war perverts perception and behavior through a kind of embodied violence. This embodied violence usually transforms into different kinds of "perversions" based on power, privilege, excitement, and the emptiness of values in a war zone. In a war zone, there are no laws and no God. In a war zone, persons without power become the objects of play for the sadists and perpetrators who, because of access to guns and power, fall into a state of utter freedom from morality and law. In the perfect freedom of war, men usually decide to create new victims beyond the innocent civilians and refugees exposed to death through the fighting and shelling. These new victims are usually women.
In war, sex becomes an action that clarifies the violent sensual depravity of what war means: for Frankl, it meant that life lost "value" and victims became "animals." During episodes of war in battle zones, women's bodies become mere objects and tools for the sadistic entertainment of men "hardened" from the experience of battle, and searching for ways to escape the horrific memories of friends and family mutilated and forgotten during conflict. The momentary distraction of sexual intercourse becomes a path to amensia and a way to match the "embodied" violence of battle itself. At its root, war is about the destruction of flesh; it is about the eradication of the body. War is violence against bodies; in a battle zone, the sweat and hormones of battle conflate with the sweat and adrenaline of sex. Like with drugs, sex becomes a way to fragment the experience of time and space in a rush of amensia. Unlike drugs, sex preserves a feeling of dominance and power. In this way, rape is the quintessential action of war: it maintains the rigid gender identities of war while focusing power on the manipulation of the body as an object. It is violence personified as sex.
Hedges also noted that cultures that consume pornography are, almost by defintion, cultures that objectify the body and desire distraction from war and violence. Pornography is the objectification of the body, but without the accompanying real violence that defines sex in a war zone. As with drugs and alcohol, the puropse of pornography is to gratify its audience by encouraging the user to get "high"--in effect, to have an orgasm. For soldiers, this "high" is a necessity within the horrific context of battle.
In class, we discussed how the effects of drugs, spectacular scenes of violence, and sex all produce a perception firmly rooted in the 'now.' They are all addictive activities, because they all momentarily abolish the memories of the persons involved. Their purpose is to relieve those persons from their memories, and, by extension, the feeling they're "in" their bodies. The memories and identies of the veteran, the solider, the victim, and the witness are often full of traumatic feelings and images. These feelings haunt the person. The person wants an escape--from themselves. They choose not to reflect on their experience; as a result, those of us trying to learn from their experience often have no information upon which to form "knowledge." The knowledge may, in fact, be unattainable. If so, this is problematic, since we've also discovered how fragile knowledge can be that comes from photography, film, the newspaper, and from personal memories.
Before class ended, we discussed one more term common to Hedges and Frankl: humiliation. It seems that humiliation is the act, or series of acts, that allow a person to become an object in the perception of another. Humiliation is essential to the loss of value in war. It is also common to life outside war zones; it occurs, in fact, every time someone experiences the loss of their status as a person.
In war, sex becomes an action that clarifies the violent sensual depravity of what war means: for Frankl, it meant that life lost "value" and victims became "animals." During episodes of war in battle zones, women's bodies become mere objects and tools for the sadistic entertainment of men "hardened" from the experience of battle, and searching for ways to escape the horrific memories of friends and family mutilated and forgotten during conflict. The momentary distraction of sexual intercourse becomes a path to amensia and a way to match the "embodied" violence of battle itself. At its root, war is about the destruction of flesh; it is about the eradication of the body. War is violence against bodies; in a battle zone, the sweat and hormones of battle conflate with the sweat and adrenaline of sex. Like with drugs, sex becomes a way to fragment the experience of time and space in a rush of amensia. Unlike drugs, sex preserves a feeling of dominance and power. In this way, rape is the quintessential action of war: it maintains the rigid gender identities of war while focusing power on the manipulation of the body as an object. It is violence personified as sex.
Hedges also noted that cultures that consume pornography are, almost by defintion, cultures that objectify the body and desire distraction from war and violence. Pornography is the objectification of the body, but without the accompanying real violence that defines sex in a war zone. As with drugs and alcohol, the puropse of pornography is to gratify its audience by encouraging the user to get "high"--in effect, to have an orgasm. For soldiers, this "high" is a necessity within the horrific context of battle.
In class, we discussed how the effects of drugs, spectacular scenes of violence, and sex all produce a perception firmly rooted in the 'now.' They are all addictive activities, because they all momentarily abolish the memories of the persons involved. Their purpose is to relieve those persons from their memories, and, by extension, the feeling they're "in" their bodies. The memories and identies of the veteran, the solider, the victim, and the witness are often full of traumatic feelings and images. These feelings haunt the person. The person wants an escape--from themselves. They choose not to reflect on their experience; as a result, those of us trying to learn from their experience often have no information upon which to form "knowledge." The knowledge may, in fact, be unattainable. If so, this is problematic, since we've also discovered how fragile knowledge can be that comes from photography, film, the newspaper, and from personal memories.
Before class ended, we discussed one more term common to Hedges and Frankl: humiliation. It seems that humiliation is the act, or series of acts, that allow a person to become an object in the perception of another. Humiliation is essential to the loss of value in war. It is also common to life outside war zones; it occurs, in fact, every time someone experiences the loss of their status as a person.
posted by Jrc at 4:01 PM
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