6533b829fe1ef96bd128aa78

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The real and the imaginary in the soldier's experience

subject

description

In this paper, I intend to shed a unifying light on three phenomena, namely: (a) the strangeness of the bullet hitting the body of the soldier's comrade; (b) the fact that, in order to perceive the battlefield as real, the soldier must alienate himself from his old identity, and (c) the impossibility of home coming. To this purpose, I will firstly introduce in some detail the sorts of expectations that, according to Améry, constitute our confidence in the world; secondly, I will return to the soldier's experience and examine each of its three stages in the light of such expectations and their role in the identity of the self.