‘Lt. Col Smith with unknown Bomb Girl’: problematizing narratives of male battlefield heroism in Canadian military museums

ABSTRACT

In this article, I analyse 15 Canadian military museums that tend towards a patriotic antagonistic approach to war that favours a narrative of masculine heroism on the battlefield. I argue that, instead, war and military museums (not just in Canada, but in other national contexts) should acknowledge complexity and controversy through the use of agonistic memory. They should take a multivocal multiperspective approach by telling the stories of those on both (all) sides of a war, connecting the homefront with the frontlines, and acknowledging the roles of societal systems in war and violence. I note certain exceptions to an unproblematized narrative of war that can be used as a template of sorts to bring a gender analysis and critical thought into military museums in order to problematize war, its representations, and its connection to society.

KEYWORDS:

• Military
• museum
• war
• feminist antimilitarism
• gender
• agonistic memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Canada was a dominion of the British Empire in 1914 that was self-governing except for foreign affairs.

2. I could find no military museums in the northern territories of Canada.

3. See Clover, Taber and Sanford (2018) for a brief analysis of six of these museums.

4. See Clover, Taber, and Sanford (2018) for a discussion of this stagecrafting.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Brock University;Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.