The soldier as hunter: pursuit, prey and display in the War on Terror

Abstract

In both political speech and news media discourse, the War on Terror has been persistently metaphorically figured as a hunt for prey. In concert with this figuration, a trope of the soldier as hunter has risen to cultural prominence. This paper examines official government discourses' use of the soldier-as-hunter paradigm, military language and training practice that reflects and augments this paradigm, and media language that uncritically echoes and furthers it. The discursive intersection of government, military, and media language is suggestively reflected in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through soldier's self-representations, particularly through trophy-taking and display. These behaviours evidence the potency, coherence, and influence of the soldier-hunter trope in the ways soldiers construct and circulate images of both themselves as hunter and the enemy as prey.