‘Appropriate’ing grief: mothers, widows and the (un) grievability of military death

ABSTRACT

The article interrogates the grievability of military lives by studying female next of kin as subjects of the post-colonial Pakistan military and suggests that these non-masculine and non-military bodies act as a symbolic embodiment of grief associated with soldier death, and as its material benefactor. A study of their affective and material management, the article traces national and local commemorative practices of grief around soldier death instituted by the Pakistan Military during the War on Terror. Female bodies are conscripted in the war effort, as dependents whose destructive affect needs restraint and channelling into appropriate grief, and as vital resources whose excessive affect can be harnessed to express productive grief and support for unpopular war policy. Drawing on fieldwork in villages, analysis of military commemorations, and interviews with officers and female next of kin, the article traces the overwhelming sense of loss that refuses closure within militarised grieving rituals. It concludes that the surfeit of public and collective grief around military lives paradoxically renders these deaths ungrievable.

KEYWORDS:

• Grievability
• military commemoration
• military wives/mothers
• gender
• war on terror
• affect

Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to the reviewers and editors of NORMA for their productive and useful engagement with the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Information based on Interviews in 2014–2015 with officers from Personnel Administration Directorate, GHQ and District Armed Services Board, Chakwal.

2 Although the term has a broader application in Islamic faith, it is used here in the context of dying in a battle waged in defence of an Islamic state. This honorific is used by the Pakistan military for soldiers that die in combat.

3 Specific references used in the article are taken from the 2010 and 2014 shows.

4 Sadqa in Islamic faith refers to an act of charity to incur divine protection. Often given in the name of a loved one to protect them from misfortune.

5 Information based on interviews in 2014–2015 with officers from Personnel Administration Directorate, GHQ.

6 I give a detailed rendition of the gendering of military grieving rituals in local spaces in my book Dying to Serve, 2020, pp. 114–124.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Rashid

Maria Rashid is currently based at the Social Research Institute at University College London as a Research Fellow. A psychologist by training, she holds a doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies in Politics. Her monograph, Dying to Serve, Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice published by Stanford University Press in 2020, sets up affective technologies as critical to the appeal of militarism in Pakistan. She has worked as a feminist practitioner, trainer, and researcher in the field of gender, masculinities and violence, including heading a national women and child rights organisation for 14 years.