Experiencing war. The reconfiguration of the senses among German soldiers deployed to Afghanistan

ABSTRACT

How do soldiers perceive situations of war? Being on patrol or in combat confronts them with new and challenging sensations and leaves its mark on the configuration of perception. Following Sarah Pink’s concept of sensory ethnography and adopting a phenomenological approach based on Hermann Schmitz and on the sociology of the senses by Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk, I want to show how the senses are shaped by military training and during deployment, using as an example the missions of German soldiers to Afghanistan. In this context, I also want to explore Judith Butler’s idea of a ‘sensate regime of war’ potentially leading to the dehumanization of the ‘enemy’ and having an impact on the perception of the country of deployment and its inhabitants as well as on soldiers’ ethics and worldviews. The investigation of this sensitive research topic of potentially traumatizing sensations within situations of war might entail narrative taboos. Therefore, I have used a triangulation of different methods: in addition to problem-centred interviews with soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan between 2005 and 2013, evaluated based on Jäger’s discourse analysis, I also draw on my own participating observations as a reserve officer in Kabul and Bamijan in 2008. In order to compare the sensory characteristics of the Afghanistan mission with other similar situations, I will also refer to works about historical as well contemporary as conflicts and wars.

KEYWORDS:

• combat
• sensory ethnography
• phenomenology
• Afghanistan
• German Armed Forces

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Interview with Kai, 2 May 2014; interview with Thomas, 5 May 2014; interview with Mark, 19 May 2014; interview with Bernd, 20 May 2014. All names of interviewees have been anonymized.

2. The term ‘emic’ refers to a viewpoint from within the researched group, as opposed to ‘etic’ as a perspective from the outside. An emic perspective derives from being a member of the group and entails the risk of insufficient distance, while an etic viewpoint can lack depth of insight (see Headland, Pike, and Harris 1990).