Debra Kelly

Introduction: variations on a theme

This marks the first varia issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies, and its aim is to present a range of current scholarship in any area of interest within the broad remit of the journal. This short introduction, therefore, simply seeks to give a possible form to the widely differing subject areas treated by the contributors, and to suggest some of the salient themes, juxtapositions and comparisons across the articles selected for this issue. The first six articles are presented in chronological sequence, moving from the First World War to more current conflicts across a wide geographical range. However, as is always the case when analysing the relationships between war and culture during conflicts and their aftermath, any chronological progression is in appearance only because memory pervades all expressions of war experience, whether in cultural productions or in cultural identities. Before moving to the presentation of the individual articles, this is also an opportunity to acknowledge the great pleasure it has been to work with my co-editor Hilary Footitt on this issue. The Journal of War and Culture Studies is especially pleased to welcome here three articles (also presented in chronological sequence) by researchers working within the Arts and Humanities Research Council–funded project ‘Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Languages Contacts in Conflict’ based at the Universities of Reading and Southampton for which Hilary Footitt is a Principal Investigator, and about which more will be said later. Claire O’Mahony begins the issue with her analysis of the French artist André Mare and the ‘camoufleurs’, a unit that pioneered the creation of large-scale camouflage in the First World War. In addition to analysing the development of diverse camouflage techniques in the war and Mare’s own

A history of the French in London: liberty, equality, opportunity

This book examines, for the first time, the history of the social, cultural, political and economic presence of the French in London, and explores the multiple ways in which this presence has contributed to the life of the city. The capital has often provided a place of refuge, from the Huguenots in the 17th century, through the period of the French Revolution, to various exile communities during the 19th century, and on to the Free French in the Second World War. It also considers the generation of French citizens who settled in post-war London, and goes on to provide insights into the contemporary French presence by assessing the motives and lives of French people seeking new opportunities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It analyses the impact that the French have had historically, and continue to have, on London life in the arts, gastronomy, business, industry and education, manifest in diverse places and institutions from the religious to the political via the educational, to the commercial and creative industries.

Introduction. War in the twentieth century: the functioning of humour in cultural representation

As the twentieth century came to a close, much scholarly attention was focused on the appraisal of its key moments, and especially on notions of memory and commemoration, as witnesses to many of these events passed from being the bearers of living testimony to being themselves the focus of memory. For Europe, the century was marked by two world wars, a number of colonial conflicts and the resurgence of bloody wars in the Balkans that seemed to bring the continent full circle rather than moving out of the cycle of ethnic hatred and territorial struggle. It is little wonder that the aftermath of war and the sheer gravity of the human tragedy have precluded sustained research into the role of humour in war-time. Yet, as an essential human experience and part of the fabric of our everyday lives and our socialization, humour does not disappear in times of conflict. It may function in a different way, it may assume different roles and disguises, but it endures, continuing to fulfil its main functions of binding the group together, of releasing tension, and of aiding survival in multiple and sometimes unexpected ways. Recent research into humour amongst contemporary emergency workers identifies it as a ’coping strategy which contributes to [their] adjustment to difficult, arduous and exhausting situations’. The findings of this research suggest that humour ’enhances communication, facilitates cognitive re-framing and social support, and has possible physical benefits’, although an important distinction is made between the ’healthy’ uses of humour, and humour that is used to ’mask feelings in a way that will later cause distress’.’ It is clear that many of the points made in relation to these contemporary emergency workers are relevant to the functioning of humour in

Editorial: War! What is it good for? The work of the Group for War and Culture Studies

This founding issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies is another milestone in the development of the work of the Group for War and Culture Studies (GWACS) established at the University of Westminster, London in 1995.1 The original aim of the Group was broadly to undertake and promote research into the relationships between war and culture, and its focus was France and Francophone countries in the twentieth century, as the idea for the research group took form in a French department in a School of Languages. France provides a particularly complex and fascinating case-study for an investigation into the impact of war on cultural production and cultural history, having been at war for almost 50 years of the twentieth century, with radically different experiences and memories of the two world wars, and still living with the legacies of brutal colonial wars. An understanding of the impact that the experience of these different types of war has made on French cultural, social and political identity is essential if we are to analyze the developments in that country throughout the twentieth century, and indeed its role in European and world affairs. The approaches developed by the Group and its participating scholars in its research seminars, conferences and publications focusing on France formed the working methods for the future as its focus expanded in later years. The Group’s place of origin in an academic environment of literary, linguistic and cultural studies, rather than in a department of history, is essential to the approaches and methodologies of the Group in its analysis of the impact that war has had on various forms of cultural production.

Introduction: Effects and Affects of Conflict in the Heat of Battle and the Cold War of Words

The centenary period of the First World War is approaching its mid-point as this varia issue is published at the beginning of 2016. 1916 was a turning point for military and public attitudes towards the war, and especially for European memory of it. 1916 was the year of Verdun and of the Somme, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost for a few metres of ground in acts that came to be used as symbols for the incomprehension of subsequent generations, but did not prevent them engaging in further conflicts on huge and bloody scales. It is fitting therefore that this issue begins with three articles which explore three aspects of the consequences of the First WorldWar, and of its representation, in three different national contexts. Joanna Bourke’s ‘Love and Limblessness: Male Heterosexuality, Disability, and the Great War’ takes as its focus the very real, but still often taboo, arena of love and sexuality in the aftermath of war in British culture. It analyses in a new light the subject of the ‘Broken Heroes’who return home, with a focus on the ‘effect’ and ‘affect’ of this introduction’s title both in the returning soldiers’ own attitudes and behaviour, and in those of women towards men disabled by the war. Another experience of the physical and emotional impact of the war, this time in the Canadian cultural context, is explored in Irene Gammel’s ‘The Memory of St Julien: Configuring Gas Warfare in Mary Riter Hamilton’s Battlefield Art’. The article not only explores the realities and representations of poison gas used for the first time as a weapon of warfare; it also brings to the fore the work of a female war artist, and a battlefield perspective long obscured by the Canadian war art establishment. In exploring the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 and its representations of a key moment of Canadian nation-building, the article also provides a link to the third article in this Great War sequence. Karen Shelby’s ‘A Lion for Flanders: Literature, Propaganda and Flemish Nationalism’ takes the example of how the memory of an iconic fourteenth-century battle, and the symbol of the Flemish Lion, is used within the political rhetoric of the Great War, in the creation of Flemish history and identity, and in public acts of commemoration and of national journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 9 No. 1, February, 2016, 1–2

Introduction: The Past, the Present and the Future of War and Culture Studies

On the 25 June 2015, the Twentieth Anniversary Conference of the Group for War and Culture Studies (GWACS) celebrated the past and present work of the last two decades, and looked forward to the future of the now well-established sub-discipline of war and culture studies. This was an important moment, shared with many long-standing members of the GWACS and with scholars who have come to its work more recently. The five articles which make up the first of a special double issue to commemorate the conference are also representative of the approaches developed over the course of 20 years in the analysis of war and its impact on cultural production in many varied forms, and in varied temporal and geographical locations. The Group forWar and Culture Studies was founded in 1995 in the former School of Languages of the University ofWestminster, and the history of the evolution of the GWACS has previously been covered in the first issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies, published in 2008. It is fitting, however, to pay tribute again here to some of the GWACS founding members, firstly Hilary Footitt, former Head of the School of Languages at what was the Polytechnic of Central London and then the University of Westminster, and who gave the first keynote lecture at the anniversary conference. It is also an opportunity to honour Ethel Tolansky who was the original driving force behind the conception and creation of the Group, and whose work on Jean Cayrol and, for example, on authors in captivity, forms some of its important early contributions to the then non-existent field of ‘war and culture studies’. Finally, Valerie Holman, Research Fellow to the GWACS in those early days, deserves further acknowledgement. Her energy, enthusiasm, and belief in the work brought to fruition not only the first GWACS conference in 1996, but also its first co-edited publication: France at War in the 20century: propaganda, myth and metaphor (Holman & Kelly, eds, 2000). Her 1997 final report on her two-year research fellowship made a number of essential points regarding the founding idea of ‘war and culture studies’: journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 9 No. 3, August, 2016, 203–208

Introduction: Geographies of War and Culture Studies

Although organized chronologically with reference to the war or conflict represented in this collection of six articles, a most striking feature of this varia issue is its geographical spread. We journey from Canada to Australia in the First World War in two opening articles which provide interesting companion pieces on the ambiguities and complexities of recruitment to the armies of the Great War and the effects of its pressures on the lives and experiences of young men at the time: Anna Branach-Kallas’s ‘Negotiating Conflicting Narratives of Obligation: conscientious objectors and deserters in Canadian Great War fiction’ and Veronique Duche, Diane de Saint Leger and Daniel Russo-Batterham’s ‘Soldier or Student? The recruitment of Australian university students in the First World War’. From the former British Empire, we move to the immediate post-war period in France and the development of further ambiguous attitudes towards the Great War and its enormous losses, this time in Chris Millington’s analysis of the relatively less wellknown ‘Communist Veterans and Paramilitarism in 1920s France: the Association republicaine des anciens combattants’. As the twentieth century develops, the focus of conflict turns to the Middle East, and again two companion articles offer insights respectively into 1956 Gaza and the Khan Younis massacre (represented in a 2009 graphic narrative) and post-civil war Lebanon (represented in a 2007 documentary performance) with Jeanne-Marie Viljoen’s ‘“Productive Myopia”: seeing past history’s spectacle of accuracy in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza’, and Solveig Gade’s ‘Learning to Live with Ghosts in the Aftermath of War: on documentary strategies in Rabih Mroue’s How Nancy Wished That Everything was an April Fool’s Joke’. These two articles provide both a contextualization of those conflicts and a close reading of the more contemporary cultural representations which they have inspired. Finally, we journey to Denmark as the issue closes with a different form of contemporary cultural representation of conflict, this time the invention of commemorative practice with reference to recent conflict in Afghanistan, in Tea Dahl Christensen’s ‘The Figure of the Soldier: discourses of indisputability and heroism in new Danish commemorative practice’, in which three salient journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 8 No. 4, November, 2015, 269–270

Introduction: Ambiguities and Ambivalences in the Representation of War and the Work of War and Culture Studies

This varia issue brings together five articles which each in their own way treat a fundamental concern of the Journal of War and Culture Studies (JWACS): the sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit ambiguities and ambivalences which in themselves constitute an underlying dynamics in the (re)construction and representation of the war experience in varied forms of cultural production as exemplified in the articles which follow in image, drama, and narrative (essay and fiction). The first article, Matthias Bandtel and Jens Tenscher’s ‘Front cover imagery and the social reconstruction of the Vietnam War. A case study of LIFE magazine’s iconology and its impact on visual discourse’ provides a link to the previous JWACS issue on the theme of ‘Communicating War’ concerned with the ways in which the causes and consequences of war are portrayed across diverse texts, imagery, and media platforms. However, it is to be noted firstly that although the article provides an entry into this varia issue which is rich with theoretical and thematic resonance for the studies which follow, the reason for it being published in a later issue is not an intellectual one, as the authors make clear. Copyright restrictions necessitated a reformulation of the article with regard to how the images, the object of analysis here, were ‘reproduced’ and referred to. As the authors conclude: ‘Since historic social artefacts like the magazine covers analyzed here offer a fruitful insight into relevant contemporary discourses, the question of dealing with copyrighted sources becomes urgent for academic research’. This is an important point and one worth repeating here. To return to the approach of the article, the authors firstly provide a carefully considered methodological approach using cultural studies and empirical models for the iconographic interpretation of images, finally arriving at what they consider the interpretation of the ‘iconological’ (their preferred term), Panofsky’s ‘third’ level of interpretation, where the intrinsic meaning of an image is uncovered. The focus on photojournalism is an important one since such images reach the contemporary public, penetrate ‘private communication’, and engender forms of journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 7 No. 2, May, 2014, 97–99

Introduction: War and Culture Studies: Blurred Boundaries and Complex Identities

A shorter introduction than is usual for a varia issue that incorporates five examples of the variety of articles which the JWACS has attracted in the course of this seventh volume. These varia issues, of which two have been included in this particular volume, aim to provide an opportunity for war and culture scholars to consider the broad range of research areas currently covered by the discipline. Those areas may often seem rather disparate, bound together only by an interest in, and a focus on, the effects of war on cultural production in various forms and in varied ways. However, as is always the case, on closer analysis there are intriguing hidden links and themes which flow from article to article, and which offer unexpected and rewarding insights into the broader scope of the work of war and culture studies. This time the recurrent themes are those of the blurred boundaries and complex identities which the experience of war and of its aftermath, of very different types of war and in very different places, produce for those experiencing them and for the ways in which those experiences are expressed. This issue moves forward chronologically, encompassing diverse geographical spaces, fulfilling the journal’s remit: from nineteenth-century South Africa with John McAleer on ‘“The eye of the artist”: Thomas Baines, the Eighth Cape Frontier War and the representation of warfare’; to Second World War London with Charlotte Charteris’s ‘Inside Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Closet: clothing as communication in wartime Britain’; and then to Second World War Germany in Roger Wood’s ‘The Referential and the Relational: Victor Klemperer’s Diaries in the Nazi Years’; and ending with two different aspects of a contemporary period which still turns its gaze back in time, returning once again to Britain and Germany with Peter Lowe’s ‘The Urge to Tell it Backwards: the Contemporary Poet and the Great War’ and finally Ian Roberts’s ‘The Return of the Hero? Contemporary German war films’. And what of these blurred boundaries and complex identities? Represented here in art, the novel, the diary, poetry, and film, they are those of the war artist’s complex witnessing of and relationship to people engaged in battle; the social outsider caught up in

Introduction: Interdisciplinary war and culture studies in action

This is the first Varia issue of Volume 6, and a first glance at the titles suggests that it contains an apparently eclectic series of five articles. Looked at more closely, however, it becomes clear that this issue provides an excellent example of the Journal of War and Culture Studies’ (JWACS) commitment to fostering interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches, and to building a multidisciplinary community of scholars to consider diverse relationships between war and culture. This engagement with a range of disciplines is manifested not least in the academic, and indeed practitioner, backgrounds of the contributors to this issue. This issue also exemplifies the broad geographical scope now offered by the JWACS as the articles take their examples and objects of study from several very different European countries and cultures, North America, and Australia. Sara McDowell’s discipline is Human Geography, and her interest in the geography of conflict and in territoriality leads necessarily to a concern with memory and memorialization. In her article, ‘Time elapsed: untangling commemorative temporalities after conflict and tragedy’, she demonstrates how power and politics ultimately determine when the past is officially remembered, using examples of diverse forms of conflict and trauma from Britain, Ireland, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, the United States and Canada. The time that elapses between a conflict or traumatic event and its memorialization can vary significantly, due, as she shows here, to a range of collective social, economic, and political circumstances, but due also to individual needs and motivations. Philippa Lyon brings a literary and cultural analysis perspective to ‘Continuities and Disjunctions: investigating British poetry anthologies of the Second World War’. The poetry of this period has undergone a re-appraisal by anthologists and literary critics, and is now asserting its own significance with regard to the First World War poetry which has so dominated in British culture and in perceptions of the war experience, previously pushing the poetry of the later war to a marginal position. Her approach here is to investigate the value of a set of poetry anthologies published, it is important to note, during the war itself. She engages with this body of anthologies through four taxonomical categories which function as an interpretive journal of war & culture studies, Vol. 6 No. 3, August, 2013, 183–184