Hegemonic Power on War Literature by ASHLEY COOK
War literature is a well known literary genre, but it is not clearly established as its own genre and has many variations in definitions, categorization, and overlapping genres, especially across different mediums. Because war literature is ill-defined and literary genres are restrictive based on arbitrary rules and characteristics, many works dealing with war or written by participants of war are overshadowed by texts that fit into stereotypical formats, mediums, and super-genres of war literature. The attempt to see war literature as its own separate genre has created an inaccurate view on genre by defining genres as inherent, exclusive groups that do not overlap and limiting, and potentially masking, the genres that overlap with war literature. The limitations in the definition of literary genres and war literature create barriers to certain types of works from being analyzed, published, and circulated as war literature and often creates barriers to modern publishing based on the ability or inability to publish the work under a different genre.
Literature itself is both a personal and social work. Past works, especially within the genre and media someone is writing in, are influential on newer works and on the idea of the genre as a whole because readers and writers implicitly pick up the expectations or common threads throughout different works and are inspired by popular or personal favorite texts, and these threads are often used to define genres or tropes, which creates a natural inclination for writers to follow the same pattern. War literature and writers are also affected by politics, whether their personal political views, cultural political views, or discourse around a specific war, and the suppression of marginalized experiences, as well as glorifying hegemonic groups in war, their experiences, and their roles in war, creates a inaccurate view of war and undiverse depiction of war in fictional accounts. By looking at the creation and definition of genre, the definitions of war literature, groups that participate in war that are not popular in war fiction or nonfiction, the suppression and perseverance of those groups in war and war writing, and scholarly works used to bring these marginalized experiences to light, we can examine how cultural, political, and academic depictions of war affect the view of war and marginalized people in war and what works are considered valuable to publishers and scholars, the suppression of marginalized or untraditional voices in war literature, and what methods have been used and can be used now to diversify the genre and studies on war history and war literature and move away from the biased ideas that restrict genre and marginalized peoples.
Genre Theory
Genre is a major categorization method, but the actual genres that texts are divided into are varied depending on discipline, community, medium, and personal experiences with the word “genre” and concepts of genre. The accepted genres vary among different groups of people and fields because genres are not inherent properties and are human categorization systems for different purposes and therefore are arbitrary and are unlimited. Even with the ability to have infinite genres, many genres exist that are generally accepted throughout different disciplines, fields, and countries, but even with these genres, there are still discrepancies when it comes to which genres are considered genres, what each genre encompasses, and what how many of these genres are considered the major or “head” genres. The study of genre theory has looked to define genre and its use. Robert Cohen and David Chandler both noted the derivation of “genre” from genus, being a type of classification, but Cohen continues to link it to “gender,” which shares the same root, to show that it is “based on division and classification. Two genders are necessary in order to define one . . .” (203). Jeff Rider takes a similar approach but rather than comparing genre to gender, he compares it to phonemes, stating, “A phoneme is . . . a collection of distinctive traits defined in opposition to other such collections . . . Like a phoneme genre may be defined “only by those of its characteristics that have differentiation value” . . . receiving its value from its place within a generic system of opposition” (18). By these definitions of genre creation and definitions, Cohen and Rider determine that genres are not necessarily defined by a set of rules but rather that as they are created genres are defined by the characteristics that they do not share with other genres. While they still acknowledge that genres are “group[s] of works selected on the basis of some shared features” (Cohen 203), they find that these shared traits need to be different between each genre. This explains why defining war literature can be so difficult but also how genres are capable of changing over time because they can have new characteristics added to either their traits that differentiate them from other genres, or as traits in literature that can be shared across genres as long as they continue to consist of the traits that are specific to their genre that sets them apart.
Even with the vague definitions due to a system of genres that define each other by “differentiating features,” genres still have overlapping areas and the definition of genre itself contains a lot of different types of categorization strategies. These genres can overlap because a work may use or combine characteristics of different genres, but especially because there are different types of genres and genre systems that are completely separate, meaning that a work could inhabit any genre from one genre system and any genre from a different genre system, or even that it must inhabit at least one genre within each genre system. Chandler explains the confusion over definition of genre and what those genres are, stating, “One theorist’s genre may be another’s sub-genre or even super-genre (and indeed what is technique, style, mode, formula or thematic grouping to one may be treated as a genre by another)” (1). Even with genres being defined within the parameters of how they relate to each other, there are still categories that are separate, like the medium of a work or its format as opposed to its setting, plot, or archetypes. Genres like romance, fantasy, and mysteries are on a separate plane as prose and poetry or books, films, and newspapers. War literature has a particular problem with its definition because it is often described like a sub-genre while some may treat it as its own genre or attempt to analyze its place throughout the other genres it inhabits. War literature branches through all traditional literary genres, like historical fiction, nonfiction, contemporary fiction, and even fantasy, science fiction, and romance, those it is traditionally recognized with the former three categories and less so latter three. Even though war stories, plotlines, messages, settings, and characters can and have existed among different genres, it appears that it is most associated with genres that are based in reality because war is a human reality, whether in history or in the present, and these accounts may be fictionalized or real depictions of past or current wars. Genres like science fiction and fantasy that are not based in reality, or romance which has a main plot that does not inherently enhance the war or experiences with war. Setting in the first case and plot conventions in the case of romance often overpower the existence of war literature within these genres whether it is because of conscious choices to look at experience closer to the realities of war in our past and present or due to unconscious separation between realistic war stories and speculative military fiction, where other genre tropes overpower sub-genre conventions. Like other genres, war literature still expands over different formats like journals, diaries, novels, films, and documentaries, but cases have been made to consider more formats, like nurse medical records and alimentary writing, or writing in relation to food. By extending the breadth of war literature to these mediums, works and authors who had previously not had authority among the genre can reclaim their authority on war experience, and research and academic writing can expand research to experiences, groups, and sources that have not been studied before or been accepted into a scholarly context.
Defining War Literature
War literature is not one of the major genre categories especially in books where it is typically a subgenre if it is labeled at all, and genres are typically not explicitly defined by publishers. One of the few places that provided a definition to war literature was the WorldCat Genre project, listing war stories as, “stories dealing with wars, campaigns or battles from the military angle” (“War stories”) and war films as, “fictional works portraying military conflicts in the twentieth century . . .” (“War films”). The definition of war films is much more specific than that of “war stories,” but it cuts out documentaries and wars from before and after the 20th century. This definition does also cut out fictional wars and the science fiction and fantasy genres by limiting war films to real conflicts. These distinctions very well could be from a marketing perspective, finding that by cutting out nonfiction, different time periods, and completely fictional worlds would narrow the category to a more recognizable, predictable product and make it easier to sell and promote future war films to audiences who enjoyed similar films. The definition of “war stories” had a particular distinction from “war films” which is that it is focused on a “military angle” which begs to question whether fictional or true accounts of wars written from a medical or other perspective are not considered “war stories” and whether war films are contained to this same definition. Basinger, a film historian, defines war films in a similar manner, though she doesn’t limit the wars to the 20th century just as long as they are “historical” and she doesn’t limit it to fictional accounts. Her definition also aligns with “war stories” by stating, “Fighting that war, planning it, and undergoing combat within it should fill the major portion of the running time,” agreeing that the film should be focused on the military aspects. These outlines for conclude that genres like military fantasy, military science fiction, and military romance are not considered war literature because they do not involve a real war, in the case of fantasy and science fiction, or that the main plot does not mainly focus on the military element of the war, like romance where the main plot is to develop the plot. Romance typically straddles a line with this literary genre and others because many stories will include romance even when they are categorized as a different genre, and the determination of which main literary genre the text should be labeled as is dependent on the prominence of the themes and genre conventions. The availability of definitions for war literature, and many literary genres and subgenres, is extremely limited due to the commercialism of the categorization system and the broad authority over who categorizes these texts, typically publishers, reviewers, critics, and retailers of books and film, which leads to scholars’ analyses to determine what is considered in the public or academic eye to be war literature.
Genre conventions can come down to themes, plot, archetypes, and setting, and a work may only contain some of the conventions identified and can also contain conventions that are associated with a different genre category, especially in genre-blending. Many scholars have found that a common convention of war literature is to serve as a method of propaganda by using the contents of the text to glorify war and soldiers. Brosman found that war literature often was used to create “national purpose and inspire a bellicose spirit” (86) and “an invitation to the military life” (87). War literature that was written or used as propaganda was intended to create a national identity and pride in that identity to convince citizens to join or support the war. Xuelin found that post-war works were often used as propaganda to create justification in war and to reinforce the national identity and values. He found that wars could be rewritten “to serve the particular contemporary needs and priorities of each society rather than to offer a comprehensive or reflective account of this historic(al) event” (Xuelin 232). The most common trope used to create this sense of national identity and support for war is the “us versus them” trope. Miller states, “Creating a clear sense of good versus evil, right versus wrong, victor versus loser is a political tool for encouraging patriotic values and instilling a sense of national identity in U.S. audiences” (23). The us versus them tope creates a simple identifiable structure to war literature and create the facade of a united front for consumers to identify themselves with and to associate different groups of people with specific actions, beliefs, values, and morality. The us versus them trope has even been used outside of a propaganda context and has labeled the government as “them” and soldiers or civilians as “us” to directly contradict the unified nation idea and critique war and the government. This trope, whether intentional or unintentional, has been used to create divisions between people of the same nation by homogenizing the representation of “us,” and this can be seen in depictions of nonwhite people as “them” and sometimes even women, which often ostracizes marginalized groups and erases nonwhite soldiers and participants in war.
A very common group to be erased from war is women, and this is heavily linked to the masculine stereotype of war and America’s history of almost never having been attacked on its own territory and therefore forgetting that civilians can become part of the war and are affected by the war, whether directly or indirectly. Many scholars have found a connection between war literature and a theme of masculinity. Broseman found that war propaganda framed combat as a form of validation of “personal and gender identity” (87). War literature has a masculine stereotype because it has been used as propaganda to convince men to go to war targeting their very identity which especially affected young men who were still discovering and creating their identity and how their gender would play a role in their life, making war appealing because it would presumably resolve this process and create a stable identity for these young men. Hutchings finds that the correlation between masculinity and war is also rooted in the idea that gender roles are created to reflect “ . . . the functional needs of societies, which include the need to make war” (391). By assigning a specific group to the idea of conflict and war, there is a built-in structure to dealing with war when it arises and a “justification” for why war occurs and creates a sense of inevitability and preparedness to war. The stereotype of war literature being a masculine genre, or war as a masculine experience, hides the participation of women in war and takes away women’s authority in the genre and on the topic of war. These conventions are simple ways to identify war literature, but they also become restrictive because of the ideas of masculinity and a homogenized identity that may not include women or people of color and create expectations for writers to follow.
Gender in War Literature
When women are present in war fiction, they are limited to what are considered feminine roles. Miller found that women would be depicted as “the object of desire for the male characters at war” (37). Women would be the representation of home, peace, and as a motivation for male soldiers to either protect or to return home to. This idea that women had to be keepers of peace and that men were the perpetrators of violence affected the rights of women and what they were allowed to do to contribute to war. Grimshaw evaluated anti-war activist women during World War I and how their activism called into question their gender role and “nature.” The women were portrayed as “spinsters” (Grimshaw 81) and failures of their femininity, and they had to recontextualize their activism and femininity through labeling anti-war activism as feminine because it was their role to create peace and to realize their role as mothers and protect their sons from fighting in the war (Grimshaw 81). Miller and Conolly-Smith both found that women were also depicted as victims to create a sense of justification in war. Miller found that it was used to enhance the “us versus them” trope (22), and Conolly-Smith examined the trope of women, especially women of color, as rape victims as a common trope in war literature and found that glorified the character who represents “us” and defeats the rapist (234-235). Women portrayed in war literature were typically seen as some form of object for men and, in relation to war, were depicted as victims. Women’s roles in war literature have often been to be an object for men, a victim, and a symbol peace, and this has created a glorified version of the suffering that women had gone through due to war and a diminished view of their contributions to the war efforts, especially by women who were at the battle front.
Expanding the Genre
Women have had to fight to participate within wars, whether by pretending to be men, recontextualizing femininity’s relation to war, working as a nurse, or some other form of compromising their gender to participate in the war. Williams looks at how women who were nurses in the war zone participated in this act of compromising gender and participation in war, especially war writing. Williams finds that women were not accepted in war literature as subjects or writers because of the masculine stereotype of war, and she notes that nurses were able to write about the war by having the soldiers be the subject rather than the war or themselves, hiding their gender as the writer by focusing on the male soldiers (21). Not only did women have to recontextualize their gender to participate in war, they also had to compromise their gender when it came to their writing for it to be considered acceptable. Williams also points out that women outside of nursing were also affected by war but that their experiences were “typically not perceived as issues that could constitute “war stories” (32). She notes that domestic life was not considered when it came to war experiences and literature, and Schultz, who studied women in the Civil War, argues, “In reframing history to include the study of domestic institutions, women's historians have demonstrated how the traditional history of political institutions has made women invisible” (13-14). Schultz argues that political institutions which are stereotyped as masculine institutions have controlled the authority over history as masculine which has kept the focus off of women and reinforced the idea that war is only a masculine experience. The authority men have over literature and history and the stereotype that only men’s experiences in war are valid, women’s experiences are erased and diminished, as is their authority over their experiences, literature and history.
Vasvári studies alimentary writing as one of these examples of hidden history and the need to study these experiences as legitimate war experiences and to note their significance to war literature and history. Vasvári notes that alimentary writing, or food writing, was an important aspect of the Holocaust, stating, “. . . alimentary life writing during wartime . . . is no longer an individual activity. . . , but becomes a crucial and constant component of the everyday life in the camps. Food talk and food writing helped to constitute the Alltag of prisoner culture of concentration camps much as did music. . .” (5). Vasvári argued that alimentary writing and music were significant to the experiences of Jewish people in the Holocaust and that they were also a product of these experiences and their culture and would be passed on through generations as a feminine form of history keeping, though a personal form of history. These types of text should then be studied as historical documents especially in the context of war and should be labeled as a form of war text even if they do not mainly consist of the military aspect of war. Alimentary writing is also part of the domestic sphere that is considered to be women’s work and is not typically associated with literature, politics, or academia. These ideas that the domestic sphere and political sphere are exclusive is a mechanism to keep men in power and to keep authority away from women when it comes to the “political institutions.” By bypassing the stereotypes of gender roles and the division between the political and domestic institutions, scholars can examine how these two spheres intersect and how women have participated in war and how their lives have been affected by war, including through domestic tasks and feminine careers.
Conclusion
Women and other marginalized groups have been excluded from war literature, and their works have been ignored because of the stereotypes and propaganda that has created a specific depiction of war and soldiers. Their experiences have been hidden due to the prejudice against their authority and experiences in the battlefield as well as seeing their experiences or contributions as not relevant to war. War literature has been extremely restrictive because of the propaganda that has turned war into a white, masculine experience where the presence of women and people of color means that they are serving as an object or victim of violence which only pushes them away from engaging with war literature. Because of these strong depictions of a specific type of war experience and a specific type of soldier, it has become extremely easy for writers to unintentionally fall into the cookie-cutter conventions without realizing whose experiences they are including and who is being excluded, and this repetition of white, masculine war experiences and literature only makes it harder for feminine or nonwhite experiences to be accepted, whether by publisher, directors, scholars, or the general audience of war literature. The war literary genre has many experiences and styles that have not been popularized or discussed because of its strict conventions, even though its definition is quite vague and inherently open to change. As more scholars study the work of women, people of color, and other marginalized groups, the definition of war literature will grow to include these voices and diverse experiences. War literature is capable of including all these diverse experiences as long as scholars accept their validity, marginalized people push for their stories to be told, and society values the diversity of human experiences.
Works Cited
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Cohen, Ralph. “History and Genre.” New Literary History, vol. 17, no. 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 203–18, https://doi.org/10.2307/468885.
Conolly-Smith, Peter. “Race-ing Rape: Representations of Sexual Violence in American Combat Films.” War & Society, vol. 32, no. 3, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 2013, pp. 233–251, https://doi org.proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/10.1179/0729247313Z.00000000025.
Grimshaw, Sabine Steffanie. Representation and Resistance: The Representation of Male and Female War Resisters of the First World War, University of Leeds, 2017.
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Hutchings, Kimberly. “Making Sense of Masculinity and War.” Men and Masculinities, vol. 10, no. 4, SAGE Publishing 2008, pp. 389–404, https://doi-org.proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/10.1177%2F1097184X07306740.
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Schultz, Jane E. Women at the Front: Gender and Genre in Literature of the American Civil War, University of Michigan, 1988. ProQuest,https://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/women-at-front-gender-genre-literatureamerican/docview/303707166/se-2?accountid=14473.
Vasvári, Louise O. "Introduction to and Bibliography for the Study of Alimentary Life Writing and Recipe Writing as War Literature." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 17, no. 3, Purdue University, 2015. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=2781&context=clcweb.
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Oregon, Ann Arbor, 2001. ProQuest, https://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/login? url=https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/writing-on-all-fronts-gender-testimony literature/docview/304715814/se-2.
ASHLEY COOK is a senior pursuing a degree in English. Selected by Trish Jenkins.