BSG 2.3: Fragged

I've been working on a concept the last few years I'm calling "political physiology." I'm defining it as "the study of interlocking intensive processes that articulate the patterns, thresholds, and triggers of emergent bodies, forming assemblages linking the social and the somatic, with sometimes the subjective as intermediary." One of the key examples is military training, in which the sub-subjective reflexes and basic emotions of the soldiers are keyed to commands issued by the leader of the unit, so that in a way the real agent of the action is the entire assemblage, not the individual subjectivities. You can read a draft of an article (under review) on this topic by clicking here.

I think we see an example for which this sort of analysis is helpful in reading a scene in Battlestar Galactica episode 2:3, "Fragged."

A group of seven humans finds themselves stranded on a planet facing a group of five Cylons of the Centurion type (fighting robots). Two die along the way. The commander of the group, while a good pilot, is very inexperienced when it comes to ground fighting. His NCO is in fact a much better leader. The commander becomes guilt-stricken about the death of his men. He concocts a hare-brained scheme to attack the Cylons before they can destroy the search party he is sure will come looking for them AND "for Socinus and Targ," the lost comrades. It's clear to the others that this is little better than a suicide mission to assuage his guilt. Part of the plan is for one of the soldiers (a ship's mechanic with no experience in ground combat) to run along the ridge and "draw the fire" of the Cylons. She panics and freezes on the spot. When the commander tries to order her to run, she stays in her freezing panic, rooted to the spot. He tries to persuade her to "do it for the others." Still panicked, she can't move. He then pulls his gun and points it at her head, repeating the order, and starts counting to three, at the end of which he will kill her if she doesn't move. She's still panicked and frozen. The competent soldier pulls his gun, points it at the commander and tells him to put down his gun. The commander gets to three, at which point we hear a gunshot, and he slumps to the tree, shot by a third member of the group, a civilian. After more adventure, the humans are rescued, and we get a bit of exposition. How did the commander die, asks the leader of the rescue mission? "He died leading the charge," says the civilian, "in the best tradition of the service." "Yes," says the competent soldier, "a hero to the end."

I like this scene because it shows that many instances of military "command" are really instances in which a charismatic leader wins assent from the members of the group. "Command," in the extreme sense of a transcendent order that is obeyed even against the will of the subordinates, only works in conditions of coercion where the implied or explicitly threatened punishment is worse than the risks of obeying the command. But even then, instances of panic can disable soldiers. Which is not to say that soldiers can't assent to missions with high risk or even suicide missions. But that's only in cases in which the soldier has become so emotionally tied to the group, often by being captured by the charisma of the leader and after his or her own identity is worn down by basic training techniques of depersonalization, that he or she comes to agree that the group's welfare is worth more than the risk to his or her life. It's this phenomenon of "group cohesion" or what Plato would call eros that enables the self-sacrifice we sometimes see in war. The bitterness of Wilfred Owen comes when the potential for sacrifice for comrades is turned into a brutal, ugly, and pointless death on behalf of a "nation" or "fatherland."

Comments

[Ben]

I think this is a really fascinating subject given the current quagmire that is Iraq and which effects are no doubt emerging in the soldiers already returned or returning from the war. I also am intrigued by how different forms of training affect different types of soldiers. I am thinking here of the differences between combat soldiers and say, the government agents that torture or "interrogate" enemy combatants. Do these agents have the same sorts of reactions or engage in the same sorts of rationalizations that the combat soldiers you and Roger talk about in your paper do? Or is there even any type of the "Oh my God what have I done" association in these types of scenarios? I know that these are two very different types of produced subjects, but in hearing you talk in class about "waterboarding" and other torture techniques from the perspective of those being tortured, I would be interested to hear if you have any thoughts on those types of practices in terms of the types of training and potential associations going on with the torturer/soldier.

[John Protevi]

It's often claimed that many torturers themselves suffer from PTSD, which shows up in very high domestic violence rates, alcoholism and drug abuse, depression, and so on. I don't have any references to studies offhand, but I have seen this claimed in many places and it's certainly plausible. The question would be to what extent these conditions pre-existed the torturer's work so that the torture only made them worse. There's probably a self-selection / intensification loop going on here. If I find any studies, I'll let you know.