In February 2025, the seventh Invictus Games took place in Vancouver Whistler, Canada. Founded by Prince Harry in 2014, games are an international adaptive sporting event which aims to “inspire recovery, support rehabilitation and generate wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country”. The event in 2025 brought together around 550 (physically and mentally) injured military staff and veterans of 25 nations, who contributed in 11 adaptive sports, including alpine skiing, wheelchair rugby, basketball in wheelchair and swimming.
In 2017, I attended the Toronto Invictus Games. At the time, my research focused on the “positive” effects of service members and veterans towards their military life and their relationship with militarism. In general terms, militarism can be understood as “the social and international relations of the preparation and conduct of organized political violence” (Stavrianakis and Selby 2013: 3), and in this regard can be considered as a structure and a “ logic ” of global policy. However, during participation in the Games, I was struck by the centrality of the military family both in the competition itself and the dominant story of recovery and rehabilitation that was circulating. The “military family” that I invoke here is not the broader military family which is sometimes referenced in terms of “warlike fraternity” or a broader military community, but rather a more literal understanding of the term, encapsulating a heteronormative (military) family structure (military).
By reading my research travel notes, there are references to the representation of the military family during the opening ceremony of the event; to “military wife” and “military mom” t-shirts carried by the members of the family of candidates; to a spontaneous standing ovation which takes place in response to the news of the partner of a competitor who was about to give birth; and in the repeated mantra that he is THE An entire family that serves. This last feeling was shared by many candidates with whom I spoke; Most of which have identified their immediate family – spouses or parents in particular – as the most important support system in their lives.
This family identification as a crucial support system is in many ways without surprise. Although historically neglected – by the military and the State – with regard to its importance to military preparation and war, the families of the military are now subject to various policies of the `family preparation ”, as well as more and more planned to take over ” with regard to veterans who pass the armed forces, or the satisfaction of the 2015 wool needs. On a rich scholarship of feminist political economists (among others Picchio 1992; Elson 1998; Bakker 2007) – The dependence of soldiers towards the families of its current and ancient members can be understood as an extension of dependence and (gendered) expectations of families and households within capitalist states.
In the context of the families of the candidates of the Invictus Games, however, what is necessary and what is expected of them is often exponentially more than their civilian or (not injured) military. Indeed, by definition, the candidates participating in the games underwent a form of physical or mental injury. Although these injuries can be relatively “light”, with a complete recovery of an individual physical and / or mental health, there were also candidates who had undergone chronic, serious and complex physical and mental injuries, in particular the loss of members, paralysis, loss of sight, post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain lesions. These injuries may require a lifespan of care, the specific needs and requirements of care intensifying both as the age of injured and family caregivers. Medical anthropologist Zoe H. Wool referred to this expected and open care of the military families after-war work for life . To say things in another way, for the families of the military dealing with serious and chronic injuries, it is not a short -term “bump” in a life path otherwise fluid or an acute period of pain, work, time and investment. Rather, it is a radical and permanent reorientation of the life of the wounded and the caregivers.
As my own research has expanded to take into account not only the emotional experiences of the members of the service and the veterans of candidates and emotional relations with militarism, but also the experiences of the military families – and military caregivers in particular – I became more and more aware that it was not only “the whole family that serves”, but that it is the whole family. In my conversations with military caregivers, some of the tasks carried out after the injury of a loved one furthermore to “regular” domestic work and to child care included: new responsibilities of care towards the military member of the household; Attend medical appointments; Keep track of what drugs are taken and when; Organize and manage the adjustments made to the household to ensure your safety and life in light of the change in physics and / or mobility of the injured family; Negotiate documents, administration and layers on bureaucracy layers (tempting) to access a form of support for disabled people or the association of veterans; And having what Kathleen Lynch called “a 24 -hour care card” of what is necessary in this (new) daily reproduction of life. As a border of a competitor of the Invictus games with whom I simply spoke: “It’s exhausting”.
Although none of the above elements returned at a spectacularized moment from “rupture point” or “collapsing”, it underlines a progressive port and a use of extremely female bodies responsible for maintaining life against a backdrop of insufficient support or social protection programs of the army or the State. At the same time, however, just like all the candidates with whom I spoke with their military experiences in a positive light, whatever the damage they could have met thanks to their service, none of the military caregivers with whom I spoke described their service of negative care, nor as explicitly causing them damage. Rather – and as others have pointed out – the work involved in the management and support of a member of the injured service or a veteran was considered as something that was considered voluntarily and undertaken as an act of love.
In addition, the act of taking care of itself also provided a vector for the “positive” effects and the maintenance experiences, including feelings of joy, fulfillment and solidarity. As a candidate’s woman told me, it was by meeting her partner and playing the official role of her caregiver ” compared to the Invictus games that she immersed herself in the life of adaptive sports and had met people and got involved in the support networks, she did. This immersion, and the relationships she has established through her, improved her life at the same time as she has exhausted and exhausted her.
It is these simultaneous experiences of prejudice and depletion and pleasure and joy, lived by military caregivers (and, in fact, by military staff and veterans themselves) in relation to military life, that speaking with candidates for Invictus and their family caregivers who revealed me. That their intimate tangle with military power was both the source of their evil And which supported and reconstituted them. What is the meaning of these two apparently contradictory experiences of military care? Why do I think it is important to take it into account?
The simplest, grateful not only the work (attentive / domestic / emotional) carried out by the families of the military – and the wives and military mothers in particular – but the harm Experienced thanks to this work, provides another example of the way in which war costs and the costs of militarism as a structure of global politics infiltrate and spread through communities and social worlds – touching, shaping and exhausting the bodies and lives often located far from the place where military violence is supposed to take place. Less simple – and perhaps more disturbing for those who seek to dismantle the military power and the structures that support it – if this damage and this depletion suffered by military caregivers should be taken into account, the same goes for their joys and pleasures. Military caregivers articulate the feelings not only of exhaustion and frustration, but also of fulfillment, joy and solidarity. In this regard, it is not only military personnel who affectively invest in militarism and experiences effects of maintaining their intimate relations with / to them, but also families of soldiers and caregivers. As uncomfortable as it is for those who have undertaken to work towards an unorganized or structured world according to the violent logics of military power, it is necessary to recognize that not only do many individuals hold emotional and emotional attachments to militarism, but also that militarism itself provides material and intangible support supported by individuals and communities. I no longer think that it is possible to imagine and work towards a world after militarism without recognizing and taking seriously the damage and joys that emerge – and WHO can live them respectively.
Notes
This article is inspired by a recently completed book manuscript for Edinburgh University Press entitled, Pleasure and exhaustion of contemporary militarism.
References
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Chisholm, Amanda and Hanna Ketola (2020), “the cruel optimism of militarism: feminist curiosity, world affect and security”, International political sociology14 (3): pp. 270-85
Elson, Diane (1998), “The Economic, The Political and the Domestic: Business, States and Mumits in the Organization of Production”, New political economy3 (2): pp. 189-208
Gray, Harriet (2022), “The Power of Love: How Love obscures domestic work and closes the space for the criticism of militarism in the autobiographical stories of British military women”, Critical military studiesDOI: 10.1080 / 23337486.2022.2033915
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Lynch, Kathleen (2007), “Love Labor as a distinct and non -marketable form of care work”, The Sociological Review55 (3): pp. 550-570
Picchio, A. (1992), Social reproduction: the political economy of the labor marketCambridge: Cambridge University Press
Stavrianakis, Anna and Jan Selby (2013), “Militarism and International Relations in the Twenty-STURY” in Anna Stavrianakis and Jan Selby (publishers), Militarism and international relations: political economy, security, theory, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 3-18
Wool, Zoe H. (2019), “Afterwar Work for Life” in Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino (ed. War and health: the medical consequences of wars in Iraq and AfghanistanNew York: New York University Press, pp. 210-30
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