Keeping the trauma of war open in the male body: resisting the hegemonic forms of masculinity and national identity in visual arts

Abstract

The imagining of the nation-state includes the appropriation of bodies as objects on which the desire for national unity and identity is brutally inscribed. The appropriation of male bodies is accompanied by hegemonic forms of masculinities that are constitutive of the national identity. This article asks how male bodies are appropriated and post-war nationalism inscribed on them and how the hegemonic forms of masculinities are produced for the purposes of ‘healing’ the national self after the trauma of war. The article seeks also to demonstrate that the processes of appropriation can be interrupted and resisted, and alternative masculinities produced in visual art. In the text, the problematique of appropriation and its interruption is discussed by using material from three Finnish cases which relate to the ways the Finnish national identity has been constructed in relation to the trauma of the Finnish Civil War and Second World War.