Reading War Fictions

When studying fictions on war, it seems reasonable to begin with the question of why war? What is it about war that makes it so significant and relevant that we need to investigate its cultural representations? My point is that war is one place of many where images, memory, truth, fiction, history and contemporaneity collide. Viewed in this way, war becomes an interesting and significant cultural complex where the cultural and literary critics can investigate a distinct cultural ordering.

It seems significant to keep in mind that war theortician Carl Von Clauswitz stated that “war is a mere continuation of policy by other means” (On War), which indicates that war is power, but I would argue in the Foucaldian sense that it is power that is productive, even as it is destructive. It is here that we should keep Chris Hedges’ argument in mind: “war is a force that gives us meaning”. Even those opposed to war, gain meaning from opposing it.

This construction of meaning will always find its way into texts, and cultural structures will operate in and through these texts. This makes it even more significant that we pay attention to how war is structured in texts, because it will reveal something of how war is structured in the culture. Even if we regard culture as a fragmented field of power relations (Matt Hills’ argument in How to Do Things With Cultural Theory and an argument I’m sympathetic towards), war becomes a very concrete structuring force, which inevitable will  re-orientate other fields.

Reading texts culturally is thus one way of delimiting the texts chosen, but it also orientates my way of approaching war fictions. I specifically argue for a five-pronged approach which is inevitably interconnected. While it is often argued that the truth value of fiction is bracketed, authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Tim O’Brien who have experienced war themselves often struggle with their personal experiencs and the truth that they feel connected to that. The experience of war is difficult to articulate for them, especially as regards the isue of truth. They want to make sure that people realize that what they are reading is true, at least on some level.

Connected to this, is the issue of memory – Vonnegut’s and O’Brien’s memories might be considered to be distorted, due to their experiences, but on the other hand, they could also be trusted more than others because they were present at these events.

Generally, media images have a tendency to influence our general understanding of history. Here the term cultural memory enters the frame, to account for our understanding of historical events. These images, whether they come from media or literature, will challenge our view of historcal events, and enter into our cultural memory.

This opens up the debate of history vs the present. What does historical distance mean in terms of understanding the text? Can we ignore facts such as Slaughterhouse-Five – which is about the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII – is published during the Vietnam War, with its napalm bombings?

Here, attention to images, especially as the field of imagology deals with hem, can prove particularly useful, since this form of study attempts to get at the ideology of the image and the position of the image in what is called the iconosphere – the circulation of images within culture. Some images are given a higher priority than others.

Finally, these things all come togehter in a discussion of trauma and te experience or rather registering of trauma. Traumatic knowledge is aways problematic, becuse trauma is not experienced but registered. Representations of traumas are therefore problematic – which returns us to the notion of truth in trauma fiction. Discussing trauma and its effects are thus necessary.

War thus encapsulates a many different concerns, and can serve as an opening into discussions of culture and representations, not to mention the relationship between culture and fiction.