Disturbing Gendered Corporeality: War Veterans' Bodies and Remote Warfare

War continues and ends in gendered bodies. Although for most of the western population battlefields are remote, they encounter war and violence in the form of war veterans’ bodies. Veterans’ mutilated and disfigured bodies material-discursively frame war and violence for entire populations when warfare takes place in remote places. While uplifted to embody the nation, damaged bodies are at the same time constant reminders of the trauma of the war and the vulnerability of the human existence. The veterans’ bodies have an ambiguous relationship to the nation and, as Marita Sturken writes, “[…] veteran’s bodies – dressed in fatigues, scarred and disabled, contaminated by toxins – refuse to let historical narratives of completion stand”. They challenge the nation’s image as an ultimate provider of human security while, at the time, they can be employed for the nationalistic purposes too. The body of the war veteran becomes ‘strange’ and ‘unfamiliar’ when the disfigurement takes place at the mental level. The above-mentioned problematique is studied in the paper through Karen Barad's new materialism and a case study of Finland and its engagement in distant warfare in Afghanistan.