Comrades in Arms

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A01=Tom Smith
archive
Author_Tom Smith
autobiography
Berlin Wall
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSF2
Category=NHW
conscientious objector
conscription
costume
cultural violence
desire
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Film
gender ideals
hegemonic masculinity
homosexuality
life writing
literature
marginalized masculinities
military training
National People's Army
National People’s Army
Ostalgie
participatory dictatorship
performance
performativity
photographs
queer
queer theory
representation
shame
socialist realism
socialist soldier
soundtracks
suffering
television
theatricality
uniform
victimhood
violence
vulnerability

Product details

  • ISBN 9781800736375
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 09 Dec 2022
  • Publisher: Berghahn Books
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Without question, the East German National People’s Army was a profoundly masculine institution that emphasized traditional ideals of stoicism, sacrifice, and physical courage. Nonetheless, as this innovative study demonstrates, depictions of the military in the film and literature of the GDR were far more nuanced and ambivalent. Departing from past studies that have found in such portrayals an unchanging, idealized masculinity, Comrades in Arms shows how cultural works both before and after reunification place violence, physical vulnerability, and military theatricality, as well as conscripts’ powerful emotions and desires, at the center of soldiers’ lives and the military institution itself.

Tom Smith is a Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews.

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