Synching the martial body: poetic encounters with Finnish cadets

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, I engage poetically with embodied experiences of Finnish cadets in physical training, bringing the study of body technique, social emotions and militarism together. I focus on the cadets’ experiences in collective movement, in particular when synchronizing and attuning with each other. I identify three bodies – minded, machine and combat – as descriptions of being part of the synching collective. I propose that the interviewed Finnish cadets associate synchrony in their training with 1) the capacity and need to think with their bodies, 2) suffering as their social glue in an instrumentalist view of the body 3) techniques for surviving combat. I approach the material I collected in fieldwork through a poetics that echoes the cadets’ articulations through my own body, as well as writing speaking directly to cadets in the second person.