The Part Humour Plays in the Production of Military Violence

ABSTRACT

This article explores the connections between humour, gender and the violent function and practice of military institutions. As such it departs from a more typical theorisation of humour in international politics as a practice of rupture or resistance. Whilst humour can contest prevailing power structures, institutions, systems of oppression and violence, this article reveals the opposite. To do so, references to humour in the Ministry of Defence’s official obituaries for British fatalities from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are analysed and discussed. Firstly, conceptualisations of humour, gender and violence are considered and an approach to humour as gender practice is detailed and situated within a feminist approach to gender and military violence. Secondly, through the MOD obituaries the article then explores how humour can contribute to the violent function and practice of the military institution and the broader social and political legitimacy of the institution and its violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Humour
• gender
• military power
• military violence
• war
• obituaries

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to: James Brassett, Chris Browning, and Alister Wedderburn who provided a forum for this paper in its various stages and encouraged me to develop it for publication; attendees at the panel “Humour and global politics: power, subjectivity and resistance” at the 2019 British International Studies Association conference in London. UK; and the anonymous reviewers, whose insights and intellectual generosity greatly improved the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This likely wouldn’t be as surprising to anyone who has been a part of or immersed in the British military.

2 And feminists are often attacked through mocking humour (see Mackie 1990, 14).

3 Exploring the particularly raced and classed function of humour within the military would be a fertile area of future research. It might, for example, interrogate the ways in which raced and classed “fit” within particular parts of the institution are marked by specific practices of humour.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Tidy

Joanna Tidy is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research work, which is concerned with the interrelations of war, gender, and military power, has recently been published in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Security Dialogue, International Political Sociology, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Critical Military Studies, and Review of International Studies.