Keeping the trauma of war open in the male body: resisting the hegemonic forms of masculinity and national identity in visual arts

Abstract

The imagining of the nation-state includes the appropriation of bodies as objects on which the desire for national unity and identity is brutally inscribed. The appropriation of male bodies is accompanied by hegemonic forms of masculinities that are constitutive of the national identity. This article asks how male bodies are appropriated and post-war nationalism inscribed on them and how the hegemonic forms of masculinities are produced for the purposes of ‘healing’ the national self after the trauma of war. The article seeks also to demonstrate that the processes of appropriation can be interrupted and resisted, and alternative masculinities produced in visual art. In the text, the problematique of appropriation and its interruption is discussed by using material from three Finnish cases which relate to the ways the Finnish national identity has been constructed in relation to the trauma of the Finnish Civil War and Second World War.

Keywords:

• male body
• war
• trauma
• national identity
• visual art
• resistance

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my research group on corporeal migration and politics (COMPORE) for insightful comments and Katariina Lillqvist's production company Camera Cagliostro for the permission to use their visual material. This research has been funded the Academy of Finland.

Notes

1. There is a twist in this story. The uniform Mannerheim is wearing is a ‘field uniform’, made especially for him. No other high-ranking officers had such a special uniform. The material is not actually threadbare: it is made of the same linen cloth as that of the Finnish female voluntary defence organization, Lotta-Svärd, women's uniforms. Effeminacy, which will be discussed later in this article, creeps into the picture. I am thankful to Gareth Griffiths for this insight.

2. There had been earlier attempts to challenge Mannerheim's heroic status, for example, in Finnish popular culture (e.g. novels and plays), but none of these caused such a rupture in the master narrative as Lillqvist's film did. Neither did the original manuscript of Lillqvist's film, and the radio play that was broadcast a couple of years before the animated film, cause any public uproar. This might be partly due to the rich visual material Lillqvist's film offers on Mannerheim's effeminacy. On the other hand, it is important to note also that maintaining the heroic image requires a constant work where the sanctity of Mannerheim's figure is reproduced. For example, during the Kiasma modern arts museum project in the early 1990s in Helsinki, the museum's location was heavily disputed since it was built next to the Mannerheim's statue.