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Unconquerable Heroes: Invictus, Redemption, and the Cultural Politics of Narrative

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-30, 16:14 authored by Alice Cree, Nick Caddick
The wounded veteran is a challenging subject for the state. Such figures bring us face to face with the fleshy and embodied impacts of state violence, and act as ‘constant reminders to the able-bodied of the negative body – of what the ablebodied are trying to avoid, forget and ignore’ (Hughes 2009, 406). These subjects must by necessity be narratively managed and reclaimed by the state, in ways which both recognise the violence of warfare and render critical responses inappropriate. Using the example of the Invictus Games, this paper argues that the wounded military body can in part be recast through emotional-political narratives of techno-heroic redemption. Through the display of ‘cyborg bodies’, elite sports men and women with prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and national flags draped around their shoulders, the Games have become performance of a posthuman body, with a ‘more-than-human’ capacity to transgress boundaries of human capability. In this way, the Games show how the narrative managing of wounded military bodies can act in service of state redemption from the violence of warfare. This paper therefore contributes to existing literatures on the politics of veteran injury, sport and war, and indeed to wider debates regarding the regulation of violence and narratives of war by the liberal state. The paper concludes by arguing that the managing of the narrative actually serves to enact a different kind of violence upon wounded military subjects, one borne out of the ‘profound inequality of storytelling’ (Plummer 2016, 285). There is no place in Invictus for veterans who convey bitterness, despondence, defeat or anger; so what can we say of those who are written out of the story?

History

Refereed

  • Yes

Volume

13

Issue number

3

Page range

258-278

Publication title

Journal of War and Culture Studies

ISSN

1752-6280

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

File version

  • Accepted version

Language

  • eng

Legacy posted date

2019-05-01

Legacy creation date

2019-05-01

Legacy Faculty/School/Department

Faculty of Health, Education, Medicine & Social Care

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