Nina Reedy

Working Title: Affective Politics of German Veteran Communities: Rendering Trauma and Violence In/Visible

In 2018 and under pressure to account for increasing numbers of German soldiers returning from deployments with physical and especially psychological injuries, the German government introduced the contested status of veterans. Other than the official state politics surrounding (wounded) veterans, there is a number of veteran associations. My focus lies on the performative power of embodied expressions of vulnerability in precisely these veteran communities, as well as on the orchestration of bodies at events and spectacles rendering the veterans’ wounds in/visible (or otherwise affectively in/tangible). A guiding question is what politics and affective communities are interpellated by such practices of showing/hiding trauma and violence.

This study is based on my participant observations at veteran sports and commemoration events, comradeship evenings, as well as qualitative interviews. This multi-sited approach allows me to evaluate how different practices stick certain attributes to the image of veterans, and at the same time constitute a multi-faceted imaginary of violent situations that appear to have inscribed themselves into the veterans’ bodies.

I draw on developments in Queer and Feminist IR, as well as insights produced in so-called affective and visual turns, Critical Military Studies and Feminist Security Studies. I employ qualitative and discourse-analytical methods and am interested in ethics and obstacles of researching security communities.

This project is being developed in the context of the LFF Graduate Program “Democratising Security in Turbulent Times”.

Research Topics:

• Gendered Nationalism
• Feminist Security Studies
• Critical Military Studies
• Bodies in International Relations
• Affective & Visual Turns in IR