Hello, and welcome to the course Paradoxes of War. What we're going to do in this class is learn a great deal about war, that's obvious. But more importantly, we're going to see how war can serve as a mirror for a society. We're going to see how war can be a topic of socioecological analysis. And how through the analysis of war, we can better understand our societies, who we are, what have become, and some of our future. But before doing that, I'm going to show you a set of images, because I think these illustrate some of the paradoxes that we're going to be talking about. So I'm just going to show you a few images that are negative in a sense, then I'm going to show you a few images that are positive. Then I'm going to ask you to do a little of a web search with some terms because we're not allowed to show those images. But let's just start. So we start with this. Now this is an interesting photograph because depends on your point of view. If you are a German, let's say in World War II, this is an expression of power. This is a a German soldier, almost a knight on his horse, and he is imposing himself on some battlefield. Obviously, from the point of view of a Russian soldier, or a Polish soldier, an American soldier, or a French soldier, or an English soldier, this is not going to be such a positive image. They're going to see it as imposition of violence, they're going to see this tank not as some majestic modern version of of a horse, but rather as this mechanical piece of evil. Mechanical piece of destruction. Here's another image. You see, and this is an interesting image because you see this man, he's about to get shot, obviously, and what I want you to look at is not just his expression, but the casualness of the man behind him. Probably an officer. I'm guessing this might be a Russian soldier based on the uniform. But the man who's about to, who's tying him to the stake, that's going to lead to this man's death is calmly smoking a pipe. In a sense so, war has this element of incredible brutality, often the self-inflicted brutality, but also done with a certain casualness, with a certain familiarity as it will. Here's another illustration of sort of the the horror and destruction of war. This could be from 1,000, if not 1,000,000 photographs from World War I. These are, I believe these are French soldiers based on the helmet, and they have all died after having tried to go over the top. They have been shot even before they made much progress and now are lying in the trenches. And I want you to consider this is a classic image of war. What we see is human beings as wastage. Human beings a, as just been discarded and having suffered a great deal. Here's another image of war. This is from the Katyn Forest. This is where the, the the Soviets were able to eliminate the large part of the officer corps of what remained of the Polish army after the German invasion. Of course the the Soviets accused the Germans of having done it, the the Germans accused the Soviets of having done it and only after 1989 we were able to confirm that Soviet and KVD troops had been responsible. What I want you to focus here, other than the horror, is the organization of, of the bodies. This isn't a random placement of bodies, this is, they're in rows and files. There's a geometric pattern to this. If you were an archaeologist and you discovered this or the bone remnants of this, you would know that his was in a sense an artificial human creation. This is not where these bodies fell. This is where the bodies were placed. And again, that's a major part of war that we're going to be talking about. How you can combine the destruction, the murder, of thousands with this kind of architectural precision. This kind of managerial precision. [SOUND] Perhaps no better photograph describes the horror of war than the kind of injury this man has suffered. Les [FOREIGN] De la Guerre, the horrors of war. This is a man from World War I, who has literally had his jaw, shot off and yet who remains alive. In a sense, again, the true horror of war might not just be the death, but the kinds of consequences of this kind of injury that can be life altering. This person could never live their normal life again. His life has been completely destroyed along with his, with his face. I love this image. This is of a small a young boy, from the clothing I would guess he's German, and he's playing in the rubble of a city. And he's constructed something like a little house, with the bricks on top of one another. And on top of that he's either put a, he's either made this himself, or may, maybe it's just a remnant of a toy and he's trying to reestablish the normality inside this what obviously is a high level of urban destruction behind him. He's trying to attempt, he's attempting to build something again. He's trying to impose that new normality on war. Here's another image. Again, this, I believe this is actually from London. This is not from Germany. And this is a bombed outscape and again, this is an image of war. War destroys. War takes something as solid as consequential as a building and leaves this behind. In a final image on the negative, if you will, side of war, this classic image of a young German soldier, probably 14 or 15. I believe this was taken in the very last days of Berlin in 1945 and we see the horror, the sadness, the fear in this young boy's face. You can just tell everything that he has gone through, everything that he's fearing that is going to come and the fact that it's being imposed on someone that we still consider a child makes it more tragic. But war is not just about this, war is not just about those images. War can also be, if you will, a positive social act. A constructive social act. That might sound strange, but follow me as we look through the following images. So, war can be about cooperation. War can be about an assertion of a community. Here we have a soldier, a sailer, and a worker. And they're working together. Also war as in a sense an establishment of their masculinity. It's not just people working together, it's men working together. And, they're doing this together. They're coordinating. They're cooperating. They're building something. Which, by the way, what they're building, or what they're working on, is precisely the tools that are going to lead to the destruction we saw in the previous photograph. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Here's war is about comradery. War is about friendship. War is about a special moment in the lives of these men. Here we have two smiling men. Now consider that these two men who look so happy, and they were sharing a moment, are perhaps about to get on a plane, from which they will parachute while people are shooting at them and they're trying to shoot at people. So there's this juxtaposition. Here is this moment of casualness, of joy, of sharing, and yet, what they are about to do, is destructive and incomprehensible. War is about love. War is one of the few spaces where men prior to the last 20 or 30 years, could publicly express their love for one another. Could talk about their affection for one another, could talk about their bond with one another. So war is about the kind of hatred we saw in the first photographs, but it can also be a moment of love. It can be a moment of assertion of a new kind of emotion. War can be a path towards mobility. Here's a photograph of African American soldiers in World War I. War can serve as a moment for particular minorities, particularly subaltern groups of once or another including women, can claim their new citizenship. Can claim a set of rights. Can claim their position in society. Now obviously, these men returned to a society that had not been changed by their participation in World War I, that sense of betrayal we definitely see in literature of the 1920s and the 1930s, but, certainly by the 1970s and the 1980s, war represents or the military represents an avenue of mobility for parts of the African American population. So at the same time that you have this sacrifice, that you're going to have this horror that these men are going to, are are going to face or which they have faced, you also have the possibility that they can come back as citizens. That they come back claiming a whole new humanity in a set of rights. War is constructive. War builds. Here we see a factory scene, I'm guessing again from the clothing from World War I. Women participating in this factory. A couple of things to note here. One is that War is again about this kind of construction. War is about this kind of building, but, notice that these are women working on a factory floor, and probably the only reason they have been given this opportunity, this part of the 20th century, is because there's a shortage of men. So, the shortage of men, which again is leading to the destruction, is leading to death, enables these women through the sense break some barriers and climb into a new position from which they might not have escaped, had it not been for the war. War again is about production. Think about certainly the American way of war, if you will is very mount, about out-producing the enemy. It is about getting all the resources of society together and pouring them forth, and allowing those kinds of resources to come together to destroy the enemy. War is a very good thing for parts of the economy, particularly if it's not being fought on your own, on your own ground. War is about unlikely friendships. War is about relief. This picture I'm guessing is from the meeting of the Soviet and the American armies at the Elbe. And this man's face in particular. The relief, the gentleness with which he's holding his American equivalent. This man also looks quite happy, the Americans certainly are smiling. Here's a moment of celebration. We have beaten Hitler, we are together, we have survived. And it's also very interesting that in not in a few months' time, these two armies are going to be facing each other as enemies. So war is ephemeral. It could at one point your allies and youâre hugging each other and you're celebrating this. In a few months time depending on the politics, you will be each other's enemies. War is this jauntiness. I really like this picture, because it shows both that jauntiness and that horror of war. Here's someone who has suffered. He's a German soldier, based on the helmet. He suffered a head injury, obviously, fairly serious. Yet he's jauntily lighting a cigarette. He is celebrating his moment. He's celebrating the relief that's coming from having been in the battle. So despite the fact that he has suffered this injury, that he is probably in a great deal of pain, he can still nonchalantly smoke a cigarette and sort of smile at the artist. War is about celebration. War is about celebrating who we are, and particularly when the war is over, war is about celebrating that moment. This is one of the most famous photographs from World War II. War is about taking that moment and saying, "We have won, we have survived!" the euphoria of war being over. The euphoria of having survived the euphoria of realizing that all this effort, all this sacrifice which has given you meaning is now over and you can enjoy that wonderful almost post orgasmic moment, of victory. War is when society celebrates. War is a moment where society celebrates its heroes, and as we will see later on, also celebrates itself. What's going on in a victory parade is not just honoring the soldiers, but in a sense the society's saying, aren't we fantastic, we have won, we have established, we can dominate, we can control. Now, I want to show you three other photographs, but unfortunately for copyright reasons we can't. So what I want to do is I would simply give you this information and I want you to go and search on the web for the images. And we can begin for example with Muhammad al-Durrah incident. This is a fairly famous photograph of a Palestinian man holding his child, his boy, 10, 12 years old, and they're caught in a crossfire and in a series of photographs, actually, of video images, you see what looks like the boy's death as a result of this gunfire. A horrific moment, there's no question about it. What's interesting about this, what I want you to think about is, especially if you go, again, on a whole variety of websites, how this photograph became in itself an issue in this war. So once I'd used this photograph to illustrate the horror of the Israeli occupation, the horror of the Israeli army. The fact that this young man had been killed when he and his father had just ventured out into the street. The other side would say, no, this is all a lie. This is actually an example of the Palestinian side using propaganda. There've been accusations about whether this really happened or not. And even today roughly 14 years after the incident. It still continues. This fight continues on the web. What I want you to think about is how funny this is. Tragic, of course. That here is an undeniable human tragedy, the death of a young boy. And it can be changed and used and argued about, in different ways. I mean that every single aspect of war can be taken, and the opposite can be written about it. That people will ascribe to the same incident in a war, two very different meanings. A second photograph. Again, you can just search on this, U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban fighters. This was again, product of a video. Where one of the Marines had actually filmed his fellow soldiers celebrating, for lack of a better word, a victory over some Taliban fighters. There's some Taliban dead and they're urinating on them. Now, what's interesting about this image, is that it also caused a huge fuss. the Marine, the Commandant of the Marine Corps actually apologized for this behavior. People were accusing the Marines of inhuman behavior, of rude behavior, this was certainly a very bad PR move for the part of the American military in Afghanistan. Yet I also want you to consider how at least to me, it is totally absurd that it is acceptable for these Marines to have killed these fighters. It is acceptable to have imposed death on them. It is acceptable to have used this violence but, it is not acceptable to urinate on them. How do these kinds of lines, where do these frontiers, where do these boundaries come from that say you are allowed to do this, but not that. And particularly again in this instance when you have this act of violence and you have a relatively normal act of urination, of course not on bodies, and the two take on such different roles. One is approved of, one is disapproved of. The last one is, I would want you to look at is Auschwitz photo album from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Yes, there is something called the Auschwitz photo album. and the last image I believe in the album is of a staff. Very much a very typical looking office staff. [COUGH] They are on a bridge. They're on some kind of picnic, or some kind of staff day. It's not quite clear. One of the men is holding an accordion. Everyone is smiling. Now this would be a perfectly normal image of any staff picnic at any single organization, except when you notice that these people are wearing German army uniforms. They actually had the death's head on their collars. And they've been identified as part of the Auschwitz staff. In fact, some of the leading perpetrators that have been identified in Auschwitz are featured in this photograph. Along with some clerical help. What I want you to consider about these images is an event one of the most horrific events in the history of mankind, the creation of this factory of death. Just suppose with this image of normality, with everyone smiling, everyone looking gay, everyone looking relaxed, so the same people who were carrying out this horrific form of destruction this war in a sense. on Jewish race on the Roma, on dissidence, on the gay population who are are perpetrating this violence, can then return to their normal humanity and celebrate on some random Sunday afternoon and look so normal. And again, this is one of the central paradoxes we're going to be looking at. How war doesn't require, war is maybe evil, okay? Depending on your point of view again, depending on which side of it you stand. But, war is also being done by ordinary people. That war, it does not need psychotic madmen. That you can take human beings that in other circumstances might appear probably normal. Might appear to be enjoying this random Sunday afternoon, and then they can return from that in the right social context, become the kind of killers that they are. [BLANK_AUDIO]
