The power of love: how love obscures domestic labour and shuts down space for critique of militarism in the autobiographical accounts of British military wives

Abstract

ABSTRACT The British military institution, like other armed organizations worldwide, relies heavily on the unpaid domestic labour performed by civilian women married to its servicemen. This labour does not often feature in public understandings of how the military functions, and feminists have argued that its invisibility contributes to the naturalization of military power. The silence surrounding military wives’ unpaid labour, however, is not complete, and this article explores how such labour is represented in autobiographical accounts written by British military wives. These texts are often centred around descriptions of domestic labour and, moreover, make overt claims about its importance to the institution itself. In my analysis, however, I explore how the texts simultaneously make claims about the importance of this labour and make it invisible as labour by positioning it, instead, as acts of love. Taken together with the idea that outsiders cannot fully understand life in a military family, I demonstrate how this framing serves to close down space for critique of the military. In addition, I argue that paying attention to how militarism functions not only through fear and suffering but also through love helps to flesh out our analyses of militarism and war as social institutions.