Killing Matters: Canadian War Remembrance and the Ghosts of Ortona

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dc.contributor.advisorYon, Daniel Arthur
dc.creatorCosh, David Ian
dc.date.accessioned2015-08-22T16:00:28Z
dc.date.available2015-08-22T16:00:28Z
dc.date.copyright2014-11-21
dc.date.issued2015-08-12
dc.date.updated2015-08-12T15:26:18Z
dc.degree.disciplineSocial Anthropology
dc.degree.levelDoctoral
dc.degree.namePhD - Doctor of Philosophy
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation combines critical discourse analysis with person-centred ethnography to examine the dissonant relationships between Canadian war veterans' narratives and the national discourse of Canadian war remembrance. The dissertation analyses Canadian war remembrance as a ritualized discourse (named Remembrance) that is produced in commemorative rituals, symbols, poetry, monuments, pilgrimages, artwork, history-writing, political speeches, government documents, media reports, and the design of the Canadian War Museum. This Remembrance discourse foregrounds and valorizes the suffering of soldiers and makes the soldier's act of dying the central issue of war. In doing so, Remembrance suppresses the significance of the soldier's act of killing and attributes this orientational framework to veterans themselves, as if it is consistent with their experiences. The dissertation problematizes this Remembrance framing of war through an analysis of WWII veterans' narratives drawn from ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted in western Canada with 23 veterans of the WWII battle of Ortona, Italy. The fieldwork consisted of life-story interviews that focused on veterans' combat experiences, supplemented by archival research and a study of the Ortona Christmas reconciliation dinner with former enemy soldiers. Through psychoanalytically-informed discourse analysis, the narratives are interpreted in terms of hidden meanings and trauma signals associated with the issue of killing. The analysis shows that many of these veterans were strongly affected by killing even when they did not know if they had killed and even though most of them tried to suppress their dissonant affects. In sum, these Ortona veterans' narratives constitute dissonant acts of remembrance that unsettle the limited moral frame within which Canadians imagine war.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/29746
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAuthor owns copyright, except where explicitly noted. Please contact the author directly with licensing requests.en_US
dc.subjectCultural anthropologyen_US
dc.subjectCanadian studiesen_US
dc.subjectPsychologyen_US
dc.subject.keywordswar
dc.subject.keywordsviolence
dc.subject.keywordscommemoration
dc.subject.keywordsmemory
dc.subject.keywordsveterans
dc.subject.keywordstrauma
dc.subject.keywordsemotion
dc.subject.keywordsnarrative
dc.subject.keywordspsychoanalysis
dc.subject.keywordsoral history
dc.subject.keywordsdiscourse analysis
dc.subject.keywordsethnography
dc.subject.keywordssacrifice
dc.subject.keywordscivil religion
dc.subject.keywordsmuseums
dc.subject.keywordspilgrimage
dc.subject.keywordsritual
dc.subject.keywordsmilitarization
dc.subject.keywordsmilitary history
dc.subject.keywordsRemembrance Day
dc.subject.keywordsCanada
dc.subject.keywordsItaly
dc.subject.keywordsSecond World War
dc.subject.keywordsAnglosphere
dc.subject.keywordsChristmas
dc.subject.keywordsChristianity
dc.subject.keywordsVimy
dc.subject.keywordsOrtona
dc.subject.keywordsCanadian War Museum
dc.subject.keywordsLondon Edmonton Regiment
dc.subject.keywordsSeaforth Highlanders of Canada
dc.subject.keywords12th Armoured Regiment (Three Rivers Regiment)
dc.titleKilling Matters: Canadian War Remembrance and the Ghosts of Ortonaen_US
dc.typeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation

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