Some of the collages created by participants at the workshop. On
the morning of Friday, September 8, we assembled outside one of the main
entrances to the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms trade
fair at the ExCel centre in London to talk about the body politics of the arms
trade.
As
part of a wider Week of Action to Stop the Arms Trade,
organized by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), we were invited to deliver
a workshop exploring bodies, feminism, queerness and militarism for Conference at the Gates,
an open air conference-action that aims to build solidarity between academics,
students, activists and artists.
The
following are some of our reflections on the conversations we had at the
conference. While the views expressed in this article are those of the
convenors, they are informed by the thought- provoking and generous
contributions of the participants who took part in the workshop.
Why the
body?
Depending
on where you are coming from the body might seem to some an odd place to start
a discussion about the politics of the arms trade. But as feminist scholars
strongly committed to thinking through ideas of the body and embodiment, it
came on the back of important political and theoretical commitments.
Long
ignored and much maligned within western thought as an unruly messy feminine
object, the body has much to teach us about the slick running of the global
arms trade industry that profits from the death and destruction of human
beings. But even prior to the specificities of the arms trade and its role in
injuring bodies, the workshop built from an idea that centering bodies in our
work teaches us about the ways in which power operates and functions.
Numerous
feminist philosophers have worked to challenge and destabilize our common-sense
understandings of the body, sex and gender, and show us that these all relate
to questions of politics, power and resistance. This workshop drew inspiration
from specific applications of a broad school of body theory to questions of
militarism and violence, work which has found a space in critical and feminist
international relations literature – such as Swati
Parashar's work on war bodies, Laura
Brigg's writings on the production of the Arab body, and Tina
Vaittinen's work on the power of the vulnerable body. The wealth of
work that feminist international relations in particular has to offer on this
topic is too vast to summarise neatly here.
While
feminist scholarship suggests that the body has much to teach us about the contours
and consequences of the global arms trade, feminist activists have also long
drawn attention to the significance of bodies for challenging practices of war
and militarisation.
From
members of Meira Paibi Women’s Movement
who stripped naked outside the historic Kangla Fort to protest the brutal rape
of Thangjam Manorama by the Indian Army to
Sisters Against the Arms Trade who chained themselves to MDBA’s
missile factory in Henlow Bedfordshire to protest their deadly use in Syria,
feminist activists have repeatedly shown that bodies are sites where the
personal and international most painfully come into contact. They have shown
that bodies are crucial in both the production and resistance of war and
militarism.
Closing
your eyes and imagining the DSEI arms fair immediately sums up how powerful
bodies are in the organization of the global arms trade. From the masculinized
soldiering bodies who interface with weapons technology; the hypersexualized
bodies of female sales assistants; the latent eroticism of (mainly male) trade
delegations touching new weapons or 'playing' in war simulations; to the
racialized and absent wounded and dead bodies (of both civilians and bodies
labelled as 'troublesome' or dangerous by military forces) that, whilst absent
within the halls of DSEI, haunt the spectacle of the arms exhibition – the
invisible bodies who are the very target, subject and object of organised
violence.
To
respond to this variety of bodies, we chose to explore these questions through
the making of zines, rather than replicating an academic panel discussion. Zines, small self-published magazines, have a
long history
in activist
traditions. Drawing from numerous radical traditions of
self-publishing they provide a different way to grapple with the politics of
DSEI. In particular the use of collage gave us an opportunity to engage
differently with the movements and deployments of differentiated bodies that
support and oppose militarism.
What do bodies do at the DSEI arms fair?
Participants
reflected on how modalities of sight worked to structure which bodies were
visible at the DSEI arms fair, drawing attention to those who were absent from
the floor of the centre although potentially present in other ways.
Reflecting
the absence of female and trans bodies from DSEI, as well as recent efforts by
the DSEI organizers to diversify recruitment into the industry, several
contributors wrestled with the issue of how to respond to governments,
militaries, security agencies and industry players that take up the embodied
struggles of marginalized groups and gut them of their radical politics in
order to make them profitable.
Participants
also brought up the issue of touch, in relation specifically to the practices
of massage booths where attendees can receive back massages from female
masseuses. There were suggestions that a gendered economy of touch and
sensation was important in understanding global arms fairs, and the ways in
which the labour of women’s bodies played a vital role in (re)producing the
arms fair and rendering it an enjoyable sensual experience.
The
discussion of touch also brought us to issues of bodily textures and interiors,
as we struggled to make sense of the surprisingly gory and bloody
demonstrations of medical technology. The presence of white soldiering bodies,
mocked up as bleedy/dying/missing limbs etc. was, for us, a surprising display
of violence, slipperiness and leakiness in an environment we had (evidently
wrongly) expected to be devoid of such representations. This raised questions
around which wounds, and whose wounds, were allowed to be seen at DSEI.
How do bodies resist the DSEI arms fair?
A protestor lifted away by police officers during a march against the Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEi) event at the ExCel Centre, London, September 2017. All rights reserved.Oddly what
did not come up in conversation was how bodies are not just simply tools or
targets in practices of state violence but also crucial in the resistance of
DSEI. This seemed strange given our location. Outside the packed corridors and
neatly organised zones of the arms fair, bodies were equally hard at work
resisting militarism; locking themselves into concrete tubes in the middle of
the road, dancing in front of delivery lorries, abseiling from bridges to block
access, attempting in a multitude of ways to prevent the arms fair from taking
place.
Yet perhaps
one of the reasons for this strange absence of resisting bodies was because it
felt so obvious. The constant police presence encircling the temporary shelter
we were using to conduct our workshop, listening into our conversations about
state violence, made it hard to ignore our own collective bodily presence at
DSEI.
Little
things like remembering not to use each other’s names in front of the police
made us conscious of how we acted around each other. This sense of embodied
relationality however did not just stop at those gathered to protest DSEI. The
reason we had collectively assembled outside the arms fair was to enact
solidarity with those people most directly affected by weapons being traded in
the UK. Our coming together in this form of embodied solidarity was therefore
an acknowledgement of our proximity and complicity in the arms trade that
profits from the destruction of life and an effort to try to assert another
kind of politics that disrupts its smooth and efficient running.
Looking back
at the workshop we as conveners were reminded of the slipperiness of bodies.
While some bodies we encountered felt sadly familiar, such as the largely male
trade delegations playing and posing with the latest military technologies,
others took us by surprise. Specifically the injured and bleeding bodies on
display in the 'Medical Engagement Zone' was for us an important reminder of
the ability of the industry to embody multiple contradictions and to profit
from the destruction of flesh.
Reflecting
on our efforts to centre bodies in our discussion of the DSEI arms fair we were
reminded, however, that to think about bodies is not just to think about them
as objects but also to think about our own embodiment. Gathered together
outside the entrance to the fair we were reminded of our embodied connection to
others who are directly affected by the global arms trade across the world. Our
choice to gather in this way was both an acknowledgement that war starts
here with us and that it is something we can take a stand against.
Conference programme 2017.