“A little taste of what it would be like to be in the military”: Performing militarism at the Canada army run

Abstract

While significant attention has been paid to the perpetuation of pro-military ideology via discourse and political practice, less attention has been paid to the role of the body in (re)producing militarism. Drawing on 40 interviews with primarily civilian Canada Army Run participants, I argue that militarism is reproduced in part via civilians’ embodied performances. Performances of militarism allow participants to feel and thus reproduce militarism through the body. Performances of military support allow participants to orient themselves toward the military in a way that reproduces pro-military mythologies and situates the performer socially as national subjects who appropriately exalt the military (and are thus deserving of exaltation in turn), binding participants together and reaffirming social bonds created via shared love of the military. Ultimately, performances of militarism reify the military as exalted, insulating it from critical consideration by the public.

Keywords

embodiment performativity sport militarism Butler

Every year the Canadian Armed Forces hosts the Canada Army Run, a pro-military celebration that takes the form of a road race. Civilian runners – the majority of participants – race alongside veterans and enlisted servicepeople through Ottawa, Canada's capital. Military flavour saturates the event. The race expo, located at the Canadian War Museum, invites attendees to handle displayed military weapons, vehicles, apparel, and gear. The race starts with a canon blast and ends with uniformed military personnel placing race medals shaped like dog tags around runners’ necks. According to the Army Run's ‘About’ webpage, the event is,

about Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces … joining together in the spirit of camaraderie and community. It's a chance for the troops to extend the military esprit de corps to Canadians and to thank them for their support. And, it's an opportunity for Canadians to say thanks to the men and women who serve them.

The Army Run's explicit goal is to enmesh civilian and military spheres. It has ample opportunity to do so as one of the largest races in Canada, drawing almost 20,000 runners and an unquantified number of spectators in 2019.

Though Canadians conceptualize themselves as being unmilitaristic, the popularity of military celebration events like the Army Run cast doubt on the accuracy of this self-conceptualization. Through the late 1900s, Canadians prided themselves for being less aggressive and militaristic than their southern neighbours (Mackey, 2002), cherishing a conception of Canadians as peacekeepers (Wegner, 2023). However, Canada's involvement in the Afghanistan war led to the remilitarization of Canadian culture and a more aggressive, martial depiction of the Canadian Armed Forces (Mutimer, 2016; Wegner, 2020). Though political elites sought to cultivate an aggressive image for the Canadian military in the early 2000s, civilians remain tied to an image of the military as helpful peacekeepers (Landriault, 2018; Wegner, 2021).

Canada has (nominally) not engaged in war or combat since leaving Afghanistan in 2014. Despite this, Canadian military policy has scarcely changed in the intervening decade (Rice and von Hlatky, 2018). The current Canadian defence policy (Department of National Defence, 2017) announces a commitment to increase defence spending from $17.1 billion in 2016–2017 to $24.6 billion in 2026–2027 on an accrual basis, with an annual cash spending increase from $18.9 billion in 2016–2017 to $32.7 billion in 2026–2027. Personnel increases are also slated, with the Regular Force growing by 3500 and the Reserve Force growing by 1500. Despite being a (nominal) time of peace, the military remains in a state of growth and – based on budget allocation – remains a priority area for the current government. Concomitantly, civilian support for the military is essential to ensure state investment can proceed unhindered. The Army Run, and events like it, is one vehicle through which support is generated, but a deeper investigation is crucial to understand how.

While the entrenchment of militarism and military values in sport is well established (Butterworth, 2017), the Canada Army Run is interesting for its amateur nature. Much analysis of sport militarism focuses on professional sport and international competition, casting civilians as fans and spectators (Desjardins, 2021). At the Army Run, civilians are active participants, which opens new avenues of inquiry regarding the role of embodied participation in sport militarism's reproduction of pro-military ideology. In this paper I draw on qualitative interviews with 40 Army Run participants to understand this reproduction. It became apparent early in the interview process that participants highly value their Army Run participation and many see participation as a means to support the military. I sought to understand: what is it about demonstrating – or performing – military support that civilians find meaningful and pleasurable? What do performances of military support do for the individual, and politically?

As an amateur sport event, the Army Run offers a unique mechanism through which to enmesh civilian and military spheres. I found that it gives civilian race participants the opportunity to perform militarism in two ways: first, some runners model military action whilst training and racing. While racing and training, runners embody (civilian ideas of) military fitness and suffering, thus entrenching militaristic values, practices, and ways of being in the public sphere; second, runners demonstrate support for the military via race participation. Runners’ demonstrations of support are often tied up in civilian conceptions of military suffering: servicepeople suffer while serving in the name of the nation, and so civilians’ suffering while racing is constructed as a gift that honours servicepeople's suffering. Both methods of performing militarism reify the military as something worth emulating and/or supporting, and further circulate militaristic bodily practices in the civilian body politic.

Militarism, the body, and performance

Critical military and war studies often focus on discourse, understanding militarism as an ideology distinct from mind, body, emotion, and thought. However, a subsect of critical military scholars depart from this perspective, centering the body. Dyvik and Greenwood (2016: 5) argue that exploring the embodiment of militarism is necessary to “trouble the binaries of insider/outsider and civilian/military in various productive ways, offering an understanding of militarism and war that is responsive to the complex and interconnected ways in which they colour all our lives.” Where embodiment is considered in the general militarism literature, the subjects of analysis are often soldiers and veterans (for example, see: Bolatagici, 2016; Bulmer & Jackson, 2016; Crane-Seeber, 2016).

Speaking of the figure of the wounded veteran, Elaine Scarry (1985: 112) argues,

the nation may ordinarily be registered in his limbs in a particular kind of handshake or salutation performed for a few seconds each day, or absorbed into his legs and back in a regional dance performed several days each year; but the same arms and legs lent out to the state for seconds or minutes and then reclaimed may in war be permanently loaned in injured and amputated limbs.

Building on Scarrey, Dawney (2019: 49) argues that “wounded military bodies are affective technologies in the production of supportive publics in war.” Dawney usefully illustrates how the embodiment of war, crystalized in the figure of the wounded veteran, is a politically useful tool in reproducing pro-military ideologies amongst the public. Televised performances of injured veterans in events like the Invictus Games present an opportunity for the state to reconfigure wounded veterans, from wounded body to more-than-human through technological medical intervention (Cree and Caddick, 2020).

That bodily performances of non-military citizens are central to configurations of nationhood is well tread ground (Billig, 1995; Edensor, 2002; Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008; Jones and Merriman, 2012; Militz, 2017), but has not yet been explored to the same degree regarding militarism. In a novel analysis of civilian embodiment of militarism, McSorley's (2016) work on the popularity of military-themed fitness classes helmed by ex-soldiers discusses the circulation of military discipline in popular fitness cultures. McSorley argues that the “structure of feeling” of military-themed fitness centres on a valuation of the military and its associated habitus wherein military fitness is “a site of production of a particular biopolitics” that is “filtered through a particular military lens” (114). McSorley's work usefully demonstrates that militarism can be felt in the civilian body, thus expanding military logics in seemingly benign ways.

Alice Cree's (2020) exploration of the UK's Military Wives Choir's performances offers insight into how civilians with familial ties to the military can be mobilized to convey sympathetic, emotional narratives that serve the state and military. Cree argues that media representations of the Military Wives Choir's emotionally powerful singing performances enact discursive and symbolic violence against the public – by encouraging publics to pity military wives and thus align themselves with the military machine that governs the military wives – and also against the choir members – by asking them to perform their emotional pain and ultimately generate support for the very institution making them vulnerable (2020: 319–320). Cree's work helpfully illustrates how civilian performances of militaristic value can generate emotional climates that necessitate public military support, with the important caveat that performers may create space for resistance, even within a militarized space.

I build on McSorley's (2016) work on civilian embodiment of militarism and Cree's (2020) work on civilian performances of militarism by analyzing civilian participants’ embodied performances of militarism at the Army Run. I am interested in the relationality of embodiment, and its attendant role in sense making, exploring how civilians come to feel militarism through their bodies. I use the concept of performing militarism to centre the body in my exploration of civilian (re)productions of militarism. I understand militarism as “a concept that refers to a complex package of ideas that, all together, foster military values in both military and civilian affairs. Taken together, the package that is militarism also justifies military priorities and military influences in cultural, economic, and political affairs” (Enloe, 2016: 11). I understand embodiment as “an indeterminate methodological field defined by perceptual experience and mode of presence and engagement in the world” (Csordas et al., 1994: 12). Or, more simply, the experience of being in the world, physically and mentally, which is a fundamental precondition of relation to anything outside the self (see Merleau-Ponty, 1962). I suggest that viewing reproduction of militarism through the lens of performance enriches our theoretical understanding of how civilians (re)produce militarism, and the role of the body therein.

Performativity

I conceptualization performing militarism through Butler's (1990) work on gender performativity, which is two pronged: 1) the “expectation” that gender “operates as an interior essence that might be disclosed […] ends up producing the very phenomenon that it anticipates”; and 2) “performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body” (1990: xv). Far from being a natural phenomenon, gender is performed through repetition and ritual that cites pre-existing assumptions about gender, which is assumed to be an essential character. Citations of gender make sense through reference to extant normative gender expectations and naturalize said gender norms by making their citation seem natural and inevitable. Performativity is thus dynamic and ongoing. I apply Butler's concept of performativity to demonstrations of military support at the Army Run. Performing militarism “ends up producing the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (Butler, 1990: xv). Cyclically, cultures of militarism are reproduced as a phenomenon that seems natural and inevitable due to regularly performed repetition and rituals. Butler's concept of performativity is useful to my analysis of embodied militarism because it allows me to highlight the centrality of civilian participation in (re)producing pro-military ideologies.

Crucial to understanding the outcome of performances of militarism is awareness that performers are performing for someone and with purpose. Erving Goffman's (1959) dramaturgical theory posits that individual identity is remade via interpersonal interaction, and thus coheres with Butler's performativity theory (Lawler, 2008). Dramaturgical theory (Goffman, 1959) suggests that social actors perform in specific ways – play certain roles – to cater to specific audiences, and thus that presentation of the self is purposeful and contextual. An individual's performance of identity will change according to location. At the Army Run, participants perform their pro-military identity in and to the public. By doing so, race participants engage in impression management, wherein they shape the views of others by carefully selecting information to present in an attempt to define a social situation. Race participants’ performances of militarism are thus carefully curated expressions with a specific aim: to define appropriate civilian relation to the military, an argument I make in detail below.

Methodology

The Army Run is a massive yearly event. The national capital's streets are closed and tens of thousands of locals and visitors are swept up in the event's excitement. To understand the fervour – what the event means to participants and what political work the event does – I conducted ethnographic fieldwork (participating in the 5-km race and attending the race expo) and qualitative, semi-structured interviews with race participants (N = 40) and event organizers (N = 3). Race participants were recruited via advertisements on social media, via snowball sampling, and via assistance from a gatekeeper: the Army Run's race director, who helpfully disseminated my call for participants. Interviews were conducted remotely over Zoom and were audio-recorded. The project received ethical clearance from Carleton University's ethics board, and all participants consented to be interviewed and audio-recorded. Participants have been pseudonymized.

As a White, Canadian woman active in the Ottawa running community, my positionality facilitated interviews as I was easily able to blend in amongst my interview cohort. Though I share a cultural background with most interview participants, my political orientation to the military differs from the majority. Prior to beginning this project, I refused to participate in the Army Run – despite its prominence in the local race calendar – due to my anti-war politics. My position starkly contrasts that of many participants who regularly attend the event, some for the express purpose of showing military support. My cultural similarities and contrasting politics surely influenced my interpretation of results. This project is grounded in an explicitly political aim – to critique cultures of militarism – so while I make every effort to avoid biased interpretation of results, I do not pretend objectivity. To mitigate political bias and overreliance on my own cultural knowledge, I share long quotations from participants to demonstrate context.

Interviews with runners focused on participant experiences, aiming to understand why participants chose to run in the event; what the event means to them; what their experiences were; and participants’ relationship to the military. Drawing on grounded theory conventions, I recruited participants until I reached saturation (Charmaz, 2014; Small, 2009). Of the race participants interviewed (n = 40), the majority were civilians (n = 31), most of whom have no personal connection to the military (n = 22). The civilian interview participants with a personal connection to the military (n = 9) either had a close family member who serves/had served in the Canadian Armed Forces, or previously served in the reserve forces. About 21 participants were women, and 19 were men. Ages ranged from 24 to 69, though most participants were in their 40 s. Most participants were White (n = 34) and born in Canada (n = 37). Analysis of the influence participant positionality has on orientation to the military is beyond the scope of this paper. I focus more on preliminary questions related to embodiment and how bodies can (be) move(d) to align with militarism rather than on how gender, race, or age can affect embodied experiences. However, I do flag these characteristics to add context to participant quotations excerpted below.

Interviews were transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were coded using qualitative software, NVivo. First round coding consisted of line-by-line analysis using Open Coding methods (Charmaz, 2014; Emerson et al., 2011; Saldaña, 2013). Open Coding is useful for “breaking down qualitative data into discrete parts, closely examining them, and comparing them for similarities and differences” (Strauss and Corbin, 1998: 102). As Open Coding encourages the researcher to remain alert to all significant trends, patterns, and themes that may be identified in the data and to code accordingly, it is a wholistic coding method that facilitates application of codes grounded in source material.

During the interview process I was struck by the passion participants have for the Army Run. Whilst coding, I attempted to isolate the underlying reasoning, to understand not just what the Army Run does politically, but also what participation in the event does for participants. Why are runners so passionate about this race? What are they getting out of participating? During initial coding, I identified two ostensively separate phenomena: runners expressed a belief that racing in the Army Run paralleled military service in some way, and runners expressed a belief that racing in the Army Run demonstrates support for the military. These data points are significant because they encompass many instances of passionate discourse. Upon further reflection and several rounds of recoding, I realized these phenomena are linked. In both instances participants are performing part of their civilian identity in relation to the military. I thus created an umbrella code titled ‘performing militarism’, into which I sorted all instances wherein participants communicated that some aspect of their event participation was meant to show their military support. All data discussed below is derived from this umbrella code, drawing exclusively on participant interviews.

Though I focus on performances that reproduce support for the military, it should be noted that participant experiences are not monolithic. While a sizeable majority of participants indicate that they participate in the Army Run as a way of supporting the military, not all of them do. One woman mentioned the military so infrequently that I explicitly asked whether she thought the Army Run's military theme was important. She said it was not. She assumed most people participate in the Army Run because it is a convenient race. Based on the rest of my interview data, her impression is inaccurate, but it illustrates the diversity of orientations amongst race participants. Even at an event with an explicit mandate to celebrate the military, not all attendees are affected in the same ways.

Performing militarism

Performing military physicality: embodying militarism

Civilian race participants’ performances of militarism manifest in myriad ways, one of which involves paralleling racing with military service. A sizeable minority of participants express that racing puts into perspective the difficulty of military service. Chris – a 32-year-old White man – says, “your training is really so little compared to what these people have done for your country.” Chris implies that the relative ease of training can help runners realize the comparative strain of military service. Namrata – a 26-year-old South Asian woman – explicitly references this idea, saying that the Army Run is about “putting it into perspective for the people participating to get maybe a little taste of what it would be like to be in the military.” Namrata elaborates, saying:

They have to be very strong and fit in order to do well in that job. So I think maybe running puts it in perspective for us common folk, because I remember actually seeing, I think, military people in their full uniform, their full kit and everything, doing the run. And I’m sure that was not easy given the heat and everything like that. So I think, a little bit, it helps put it into perspective for us to know how difficult it must be in those circumstances, in whatever weather you’re facing and the hardships that they’re facing.

Chris and Namrata conceptualize military service as physically arduous and difficult, and intimate that racing gives runners insight into the difficulty of military service. Through running they are able to gain embodied insight into military reality by performing a lesser version of the action required by servicepeople.

Other participants allege that running and racing allows for embodied understanding of military service, and not merely through comparison. For example, Todd – a 66-year-old White man – explains how racing parallels military service:

To run, well the distances that I do anyhow, you have to show some dedication and training and it's not at all easy. It's a lot of suffering as well. So I think this dedication, discipline and suffering are all part of what the military endures every day. These military people are not having an easy life, really. It sounds glamorous, in advertising, but in real life - it's not easy. And I know, because I was in the [reserve forces]…

Yeah, so the discipline, the suffering, for training and then the actual run itself is very, very symbolic of all the efforts that the military people do because there's physical activity being a military person. Not just sitting around an office pushing paper.

Todd directly parallels military service and race training. Notably, participants’ conceptions of what military labour looks like – physically active, strenuous – communicates an understanding of military labour that is not technically accurate. Regular Force personnel spend an average of 5 h per work day sitting, and 74% of Regular Force personnel were classified as overweight or obese according to self-reported BMI in 2013–2014 (Thériault et al., 2016). The idea that all military activity is physically demanding and all service people physically fit cites a romanticized myth of military strength, suffering and sacrifice. This myth is cited through race performance and preparation and is thus recirculated at events like the Army Run by participants. The veracity of this myth is irrelevant, as through the “repetition and ritual” of performance it “achieves its effects through its naturalization in the context of a body” (Butler, 1990: xv).

The myth of veteran sacrifice and suffering – often crystalized in the image of the wounded veteran (Dawney, 2019), and made knowable to runners by their own experiences suffering from fatigue during a race – has political affects. As Dawney (2019: 66) argues,

The potent untouchability of the pain and suffering of others makes certain responses, such as criticism of participation in war, or criticism of militarism, unavailable, while rendering responses of admiration and respect the only appropriate ones. Thus, the forms of visibility that produce such wounded or heroic figurations render other forms of subject formation difficult. Wounding and death in the British Armed Forces is framed such that it incites collective affects of national identity, celebration, sentimentality and mourning.

As Chris and Namrata allege, the suffering of servicepeople remains untouchable as the degree of suffering far outstrip runners’ experiences, but the approach offers some understanding. Yet the effect identified by Dawney – that of national identity formation and celebration – is not at all diminished by the embodied understanding gained by race participants.

I understand participants’ espoused ability to understand military service via race participation or preparation as a performance of militarism. The breadth of performativity is made clear by Alex – a 41-year-old mixed race man – when discussing why a race is an appropriate event to celebrate the military:

The men and women that serve our country are heroes, and I think to be a hero there's a certain physical component to what they do. So I think the representation of athletics around their ecosystem and what they’re doing naturally makes sense, whereas… Yeah, like, a beer garden I’m sure would be even more successful, but it's not quite exactly what the army's all about.

Alex endorses a military themed race as an opportunity for race participants to emulate the physical strength of military service people by performing militarism (or perhaps, by playing at being soldiers) in a respectful, deferential way. Runners’ performances of militarism – pushing limits and showing excellence through physical activity, as servicepeople are understood to do regularly – further entrench beliefs of military greatness through the very act of citational performance. In discussing her conception of performativity, Butler draws on Derrida's reading of Kafka's “Before the Law.” She writes:

There the one who waits for the law, sits before the door of the law, attributes a certain force to the law for which one waits. The anticipation of an authoritative disclosure of meaning is the means by which the authority is attributed and installed: the anticipation conjures its object. (Butler, 1990: xv)

The heroism Alex reads in the military is (re)articulated at the Army Run by the very citation of the myth itself. Runners anticipate stories of military heroism and greatness, and in eagerly mirroring their conception of military strength via pushing their own limits through a running challenge, they reproduce civilian understandings of military greatness in the first place.

Performances of militarism are not limited to civilian runners attempting to model servicepeople's physical prowess via their own running. A few participants also reference running as a mechanism to bond servicepeople together, and to allow civilian participants to join in on this bond. Ryan – a 33-year-old White man who is a military veteran – says:

I think it did and does help create a bond in the military. Cause a lot of our training and what we do literally involves sweaty, sweaty exercise, and you’re physically working hard. And especially in the Afghan years, it's in a hot dusty area. Like, there's just a component of comradery that's fostered through physical effort. And the Army Run allowed for Canadians to join in that.

Ryan argues the military bond that is established by suffering through physical exertion is extended to civilians through the Army Run, enabling race participations “to join in” by sweating and suffering alongside, or in honour of, servicepeople.

Miguel – a 41-year-old Southeast Asian man – shares Ryan's sentiments, but from the perspective of a civilian. He explains that through running alongside uniformed servicepeople and receiving a dog tag medal at the end of the race, “for me, those things on top of the medal, it makes you feel like, ‘okay, at least once a year, I’m part of them and I’m one of them’.” Participation in the Army Run facilitates a performance of militarism that results not just in a better understanding of the trials servicepeople endure, but in Miguel feeling a part of the Canadian Armed Forces.

In the Army Run website's ‘About’ section, the race is described as “a chance for the troops to extend the military esprit de corps to Canadians.” Ryan and Miguel's perception of a bond being formed between civilian Canadians and Canadian military personnel is thus not an aberration, but rather a stated intent of the event. Historian William McNeill (1997) posits that military drills, marching, and similar practices enable ‘muscular bonding’ as a central function of engendering a military ‘esprit de corps’. Commenting on McNeill's conception of muscular bonding, Kevin McSorley likens it to Durkheim's (1915) ‘collective effervescence’, stating collective military fitness enables “emotional binding to something bigger than one's individual self, an intercorporeal recognition of the social, here as organised and refracted through the military” (2016: 106). That civilian race participants can join the military's esprit de corps, however temporarily, engenders a lasting civilian-military connection felt in the physical and social body.

When participants imagine race participation as akin to military service it allows them to feel closer to the military, to feel a part of it, or in some cases to learn about military service via ‘perspective’. It allows them to perform militarism, to use their running bodies, gasping lungs, and perspiring skin to learn what (they think) it means to be military. This knowledge is embodied (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), in that it can only come about through embodied engagement with militarism. The popularity of the Army Run, and the opportunity it allows for civilian runners to feel an embodied connection to the military via performance of (civilian conceptions of) militarism allows for the circulation of militarism as a desired bodily practice. Runners (believe that they) ‘get a taste’ of what it feels like to undergo the rigours of basic training, and (believe that they) feel the military esprit de corps by running alongside veterans, enlisted servicepeople, and supportive civilians. These performances lead to an assumed understanding of military sacrifice, and thus increased support for the military, as discussed below.

Performing military support: the gift of suffering

While some participants perform militarism by modelling military physicality, others do so by communicating political support. The majority of interview participants expressed desire to show military support via race participation. Steve – a 47-year-old White man – explains why embodied participation is significant for civilians showing military support:

I think it sort of shows your support. Because to be a part of the military, particularly in the active military, you have to be very, very fit, you have to be very active, and just the fact of running, just running, just showing that, you know what, I’m going to get out there with 25,000 people and I’m going to give it my all, I’m gunna give whatever I got in me right now, during that 2 h or less, to show my support.

Like the participants quoted in the preceding section, Steve references the idea that a foundation of military activity is physical exertion. However, Steve does not indicate that running enables better understanding of military service; instead, he implies that running allows him to show support.

Miguel – a 41-year-old Southeast Asian man – says that running “honours” the sacrifices of soldiers:

It's also a good way of, like, reminding yourself that there are people who literally give up their life, right? For their country. So, like, what is 10k? Or what is a half-marathon? Yeah, so more, for me, it's always disciplining myself. Running is not always fun for everyone. There are times like, ‘why do I have to run?’ You know, there are different costs and reminders of pleasure. This is nothing compared to what they’ve undergone.

I interpret Miguel's explanation as communicating that participating in the Army Run is a way to honour the sacrifices of the Canadian Armed Forces, and also to put the suffering of running into perspective by comparing it to what servicepeople have “undergone.”

Several participants in addition to Miguel – like Namrata and Todd, mentioned previously – discuss running in terms of suffering and discipline, relating each to the perceived suffering of servicepeople and the discipline inherent in military service. While I have demonstrated above that preoccupation with the parallels between running and military service allows Army Run participants to perform militarism in a manner that enables embodied reproduction of military myth, I further contend that the preoccupation with suffering and discipline is intended as a reciprocal arrangement.

Citing Crossley (2004), who argues that pain is often embraced as a path toward improvement in fitness cultures, McSorley (2016: 111) argues that, “the ethos of military fitness emphasizes intensity and productive experiential learning that is based upon the imbrication of pain and exhaustion with achievement and pleasure.” At the Army Run, pain and suffering caused by running is something to be embraced. Running, sweating, and suffering is viewed as a means to better understand what servicepeople have gone through, and, importantly, as a gift.

Marcel Mauss (1967) understands gift giving as a social practice that is: reciprocal, occurs between groups as well as individuals, and results in social solidarity. Prevalent Canadian military mythologies conceptualize servicepeople as having suffered and sacrificed for the good of the nation. Conceptualizing their suffering as a gift from servicepeople to the nation, Army Run participants reciprocate: they willingly suffer through the pain of running and training to demonstrate that they have received servicepeople's gift, and are returning it in kind. The difficulty of racing is dedicated to suffering servicepeople to acknowledge and honour their suffering, creating a hierarchical relation between civilians and military personnel and making the veneration of servicepeople apparent through willing civilian sacrifice. Suffering is thus performative; it is invoked through the action of suffering, and has the intention of solidifying social relations, in this case between civilians and idealized military personnel standing in for the military at large.

Though participants’ modelling of military physicality might seem to have little in common with participants’ communication of political support via race participation, I argue that both are performances of militarism. Militarism is “a complex package of ideas that, all together, foster military values in both military and civilian affairs” (Enloe, 2016: 11). Whether event participants conceptualize racing as a way to mirror military service or as a way to communicate support for the military, the end result is the same: runners are using their bodies to engage with the military and the military is thus reaffirmed as something worth valuing. Interest in and support for the military is circulated by participants at the Army Run, ultimately reifying the importance of the military in civil society. Consideration of what performances of support do for the performer further illustrate this.

Performing political alignment: creating communities of support

Performances of military support orient participants toward the military in the eyes of the public and the military. This is best illustrated by the fact that civilians who have not participated in the Army Run will sometimes thank other civilians for participating. George – a 69-year-old White man – discusses his reaction to receiving thanks:

It's kind of funny when people say, ‘thank you for running a race’ and people cheer you for running in a race and you think ‘boy, this is nothing.’ We’re doing something we love. And we worked hard, there's no question we worked hard because we want to do well, but it's nothing compared to what the men, mostly men but women too, of course, who sacrificed their lives in these wars.

George's description of people thanking him for running in the Army Run highlights a facet of what race participation signals: while runners may participate in the Army Run because they believe it is an opportunity to perform support for the military, participation also positions the runner significantly in the eyes of the public. Using Goffman's dramaturgical theory (1959) to analyse this phenomenon, I interpret that runners are orienting themselves politically toward the military by using race participation to align themselves with military support. Such an orientation, created by the performance of support, is significant enough that people will routinely thank race participants. As a result, race participation becomes a political symbol: people support runners’ support of the military.

Consider Pauline's – a 61-year-old White Canadian woman – discussion of her Army Run clothing choices and peoples’ reactions to them. Showing support for the military is “important” to Pauline:

I’m out there supporting the families. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people say ‘thank you for being here’ and so and so. You know, I run with a group of girls and we always get our shirts printed with a great big ‘thank you Canadian heroes.’ And, you know, mothers who have lost a son… we’ve had people come up to us so many times and just say ‘thank you for being here.’ And I think it's just being a presence, especially for families or for members of the military that are even participating, to know that people appreciate what they’re doing. I think that's very, very important because, you know, they don’t see or hear appreciation from Canadians as much as they should.

Pauline’s description of the cycle of support and appreciation is instructive: she begins her explanation by expressing support and appreciation for military members and their families, then describes how people appreciate her support. She ends the explanation again describing her appreciation for military servicepeople.

Pauline is entangled in a politics of support that circulates socially. Militz and Schurr's (2016: 56) conception of affective nationalism involves “processes that effect feelings of national belonging and alienation as a continuous flow connecting different bodies.” Sara Ahmed (2004: 124) asserts that “love becomes a way of bonding with others in relation to an ideal, which takes shape as an effect of such bonding.” Affective nationalism centers flows between bodies that create feelings of belonging and/or alienation, which can be centred around love. Pauline's performance of military support connects her to other bodies that are similarly oriented toward the military, creating a community of bodies aligned with militarism.

Note Pauline's suggestion that her determination to show support stems from a belief the military does not receive as much appreciation as it “should.” While others may fail to appropriately appreciate the Canadian Armed Forces, Pauline does not. I do not suggest that runners participate in the Army Run to receive accolades for their performances of support. However, I found some participants conceptualize public performances of support as evidence of moral character. For example, Judy – a 56-year-old White woman – says:

It's our duty to participate in [the Army Run]. Because I think it's really amazing what these soldiers have done. Their stories and such and what they have gone through and the privileges I get because others are willing to go there where I don’t have family connections that have gone. So, it's just that really - I think it's important that we participate. And I think it's important that Canadians are participating. Anybody that has access to this run - everybody should be participating that lives in this country.

I interpret a moral judgement lurking beneath Judy's words. It is not enough to merely support the military; one must also publicly perform support via participation in the Army Run. The imperative to public performance via participation signals political orientation. As identity is always in process (Butler, 1990), Judy must repeatedly perform militarism to continuously mark herself as a subject aligned with the military. She is engaging in impression management (Goffman, 1959).

Participating in the Army Run positions Judy as a good Canadian who does her “duty”. Sara Ahmed (2004: 123) writes that love “reproduces the collective as ideal through producing a particular kind of subject whose allegiance to the ideal makes it an ideal in the first place.” Opportunities to publicly perform military worship thus allow for public policing of pro-military politics and the creation of a politically aligned collective: participants can see who is performing support, can make moral judgements as a result, and can form community ties with those in alignment. Such performances also reaffirm the supremacy of the ideal. The Canadian Armed Forces are reified as an object of love through performances of exaltation. Sunera Thobani (2007: 8) argues that the exaltation of idealized citizens is “a technique of power that acculturates the national subject into the isomorphic state-nation-subject triad” and as a result “seduces subjects into reproducing their nationality.” As follows, the community aligned with the ideal are exalted alongside the military as state institution, which in turn encourages further military exaltation.

Judy's implicit disapproval of those who do not adequately support the military – and perform their support via Army Run participation – ostracizes them from the community oriented toward the military as part of her impression management (Goffman, 1959). Thobani (2007) notes that a crucial part of exaltation is exclusion, stating “exaltation has been key to the constitution of the national subject as a particular kind of human being, a member of a particular kind of community, and, hence ontologically and existentially distinct from the strangers to this community” (2007: 5). If the national subject is one who appropriately exalts the ideal (here, the Canadian Armed Forces), those who fail to do so become strangers to the community.

Similarly, Ahmed (2004: 137) states that, “this national ideal is presented as all the more ideal through the failure of other others to approximate the ideal.” The myth that Canadian civilians are insufficiently supportive of the military works to bolster support amongst those who are oriented toward the military while divorcing supportive citizens from those who are oriented away from the military. The exclusion of those who fail to perform veneration of the military creates a community that welcomes only those supportive of state institutions and agendas. This effectively excludes those critical of the Canadian Armed Forces.

The performative work of militarism is multi-faceted. Public performances normalize military worship and circulate prominent military mythologies regarding military goodness, to such an extent that the reality of military action becomes irrelevant: “The anticipation conjures its object” (Butler, 1990: xv). Public performances also strengthen pro-military cultures by binding performers together and solidifying affects of love and respect oriented toward the military and toward those who support the military. Individual and community alignment with the military has significant political effects. Mass civilian support for the military from those aligned with it generates increased military power in various ways, from the material – increased enlistment, advocating for increased state military budgets, donating to veteran support charities and thus enabling insufficient state support to continue, etc. – to the ideological – supporting all military action and therefore failing to challenge military misdeeds, problematic structures, etc. Even if the community aligned with the military is the minority of the populace, an active community performing military support creates the appearance of mass support and may stifle mass dissent or public critique.

Conclusion

This paper demonstrates the important role civilians have in reproducing cultures of militarism and the significance of embodied participation in military celebration which allows civilians to feel, know, and reproduce militarism. My conceptualization of performances of militarism allows for an exploration of ground-up military support, rather than focusing on militaristic discourses propagated by the state or mass media. It enables analysis of how civilians engage with extant pro-military ideologies via citational practices. Paying attention to civilian embodiment of militarism, and not just how civilians are affected by, and engage with, militaristic discourses, is fruitful as it offers further insight into the ways in which militarism and military logics encroach on the public sphere. Practically speaking, I hope that understanding how civilians reproduce cultures of militarism will allow for more effective feminist and decolonial anti-militarism and anti-militarization political advocacy.

Ultimately, I found that amongst participants who indicate that racing in the Army Run parallels military service, an embodied kinship with the military is formed. Civilians feel and interiorize militarism, thus (re)entrenching it as a larger part of Canadian culture. Additionally, I found that many runners consider their race participation as a venue through which to perform military support. For those runners, the act of racing and the suffering inherent in running enable participants to perform support: suffering is a gift, a demonstration of gratitude for the suffering of servicepeople.

I argue that the visibility of performances of military support has the political affect of structuring community: performances of support, grounded in love, corral those oriented toward the military together, reifying the military as an object of love. Those who feel love for the military are in turn reified as appropriate national citizens. Ultimately, runners’ performances of military support reproduce Canadian Armed Forces mythologies of military benevolence and necessity, thus demonstrating the important role civilians have in reproducing cultures of militarism and the significance of embodied participation in military celebration which allows civilians to learn and then reproduce military logics through their bodies.

That the Army Run is an amateur sport event is far from incidental. The sportive nature of the event gives participants an opportunity to embody militarism, to learn through feel what it means to be military, to perform military support through the sweat and exertion of racing. The public nature of an amateur race also invites the formation of an audience to which support can be performed, and amongst which communities of feeling can be formed (Goffman, 1959).

Given the nature of the Army Run – an explicitly pro-military celebration – this study's scope is necessarily limited. Those politically opposed to the military are unlikely to participate in the Canada Army Run, and thus my sample is comprised of those positively or neutrally oriented toward the military. Future work analysing the embodiment of militarism in less explicitly pro-military venues would offer compelling insight into the degree to which military logics have suffused non-military cultures, if it has at all.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Bridgette Desjardins is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

ORCID iD

Bridgette M Desjardins

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