The Art of Governing Trauma: Treating PTSD in the Canadian Military as a Foreign Policy Practice.

In recent years significant attention has been focused on the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) amongst members of the Canadian Forces. The military’s Ombudsman, in particular, has been active in problematizing the mental health of Canadian soldiers, as well as their treatment (both social and medical). In the production of this narrative of PTSD amongst Canadian soldiers, one piece of art has become particularly prominent. After spending 80 years in storage, Colin Gill’s 1920 painting titled Canadian Observation Post, which depicts a soldier suffering from ‘shell shock’ in WWI, has recently come to be displayed in museums across Canada, and has been featured in various special reports, opinion pieces, and other publications produced by the military’s Ombudsman. It is now displayed prominently in the new Canadian War Museum. This paper questions why this painting from WWI has suddenly been featured so regularly, how it has become useful, and how it functions within emergent narratives concerning PTSD in the Canadian Forces. The paper argues that the use of the painting has been called upon to visually constitute PTSD as an illness, and one that soldiers have always experienced. The recent ‘discovery’ of PTSD and the medicalization of trauma is then positioned as evidence of progress (in the military and in medicine) and improved care. This paper disrupts such narratives by questioning the political effects of treating trauma as an illness. It is argued PTSD functions as a strategy of intelligibility and a governmental technology that marginalizes critical questions about Canada’s foreign policy, including Canada’s so-called ‘peacekeeping’ role, its place in producing a liberal world order, and its role in the ‘war on terror.’ While such topics are rarely considered in Canadian foreign policy analysis, the paper ends by considering the implications of taking art and the visual seriously, and moreover of viewing foreign policy as a governmental practice. It is argued that paying attention to such issues in the field of Canadian foreign policy analysis raises new and important questions about Canada’s foreign policy practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]