The Representations of the Enemy in Contemporary Western Wars

Abstract

Military historians and anthropologists have documented how the images of the enemy influence the conduct of war. While this question has been comprehensively documented concerning « old » wars, we know little about the way in which contemporary combatants perceive their enemies. This panel proposes to shed some light on this blind-spot with a particular focus on the contemporary Western wars (since the end of the Cold War). The papers rely on different data sets – public discourses, memoirs, interviews – and explore three interconnected questions. The first investigates the nexus between public and military representations of the enemy. In other words, the papers try to understand what soldiers “do” with the public justifications of contemporary Western wars (like the discourse on the “war on terror”), and whether they have a specific (military?) representation of the enemy. Second, all panel participants try to understand how the revolution in the “Western way of war” (the use of new technologies like computers and remote control systems) have affected the soldiers’ representations of the enemy. Finally, all panel participants share the sociological view that war remains, in spite of the increasing geographical and social distance between combatants, a social practice materialized by interactions between com-batants (i.e., etymologically, those who “fight with”). Hence, the papers try to understand how the experience of war transforms the soldiers’ representations. Do they revise or change their pre-constituted image of the Other in the course of the violent confrontation? Or is the interaction with the enemy on the contrary an experience that confirms and solidifies those pre-constituted prejudices? We believe that this panel would fit in section 42 (Political Violence: Identity and Ideology, S. Marsen and W. Thomson). An alternative option would be section 14 (Cooperation, Conflict and Security in Global Politics, V. Simral and P. Aepler).

Title	Details
Enemies as seen through Grunt-lit: Analyzing the Enemy Images in Military Memoirs written by Soldiers Deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq	View Paper Details
The Image of the Other as a Mirror Image of the Self. The Representation of Islamic Terrorists in the French Air Force	View Paper Details
When David confronts Hercules? Enmity and the Impossible 'Idiom of Military Force' under Conditions of 'Asymmetry'	View Paper Details
Vulnerable Frames of War? Counter-Hegemonic and Cosmopolitan Criticisms of Contemporary Postcolonial Wars	View Paper Details