Military graves are often associated with orderliness, and Arnos Vale is no exception. Even in non-military contexts the graves are seen as rigid: think of some network TV actor with teeth “like soldiers’ graves”. It’s commonly expected that military graves be organised and uniform, whereas civilian plots are often decorative and individualised. The questions remaining are why this might be the case, and how an influence is maintained on soldiers’ lives so much that they reflect this in death.
State Power vs(and) Pastoral Power
Foucault argues in “Discipline and Punish” (1977) that since the modern nation-state emerged in the 18th century, the threat of state power has taken on a much subtler form than fear of execution, which was more characteristic of earlier forms of government, like absolute monarchy or feudalism. While violence previously exerted control, now internalised societal norms do. Foucault links this to the beginning of the rehabilitating and reforming prison structure, characterised by lenience and correction being prioritised rather than violence. He argues that state power is still being enacted subtly in this setting, however it is transferred through environmental norms, like the construction of a strict routine and the surrender of personal liberties like privacy. As these conventions are normalised over time people internalise the taught behaviours and begin to self-correct any deviances, conforming to state power without violent influence.
The prison system and the military are both state security institutions containing vast norms of conduct; arguably many of the norms established within the prison sector of the judicial system extend to the military as well. This could extend to one’s last will, ensuring even the body’s posthumous movement occurred within these norms, especially if posthumous ritual was enacted within a military context.
Garcia’s work on pastoral power acts as a means of explaining how state power structures have an influence on ritual surrounding death, with self-discipline continuing posthumously. Pastoral power is explained in two aspects linked to the ability to heal: the first is the aesthetic ideal of the pastoral harkening back to Arcadia and Idyll, an idealised stretching countryside, characterised by a simpler life capable of inner healing; the second is the pastoral relating to the pastor, regarding the power of a priestly or generally religious presence to heal. Both aspects and their intersections are explored in “The Pastoral Clinic” and mingle in the setting of a military gravesite as both an interaction with the environment and a sacred site. Pastoral power normalises salvation as the ultimate healing in a group, and this is sought after through priestly guidance and the landscape in the Espanola Valley setting of “The Pastoral Clinic”. Although in “The Pastoral Clinic” this salvation is reached while alive through rehabilitative processes, which is itself like Foucault’s observation regarding the removal of executionary power in the nation-state, the salvation in Arnos Vale is a posthumous goal.
Combining both approaches helps explain a place of salvatory and military importance, like a soldier’s gravesite.
Arnos Vale and Sailors Corner
Sailors Corner is composed of two evenly spaced lines of forty naval headstones of sailors who died in Bristol hospitals during the Second World War (Figure 1). This is different to many of the other plots, which are often directly next to one another, crooked, ornate either in design or decoration left by visitors, descriptive, and featuring above-ground box plots in a multitude of colours. Sailors Corner is notable as well for the headstones’ smaller shape, muted grey colour, and limited information and decoration, particularly as it comes to characteristics of personality.
The main manifestation of Foucauldian notions of state and pastoral power in the Sailors’ Corner is the internalisation of disciplinary and salvatory norms accumulated in the militaristic setting of the sailors’ service. Militaristic norms of routine and unity are reflected posthumously in the same shape and colour of stone, the same font, the same symbols engraved in the headstone for minimal decoration and the same information given on each of those buried (Figure 1). Foucault argues that a notable difference between typical state discipline and a pastoral power is that the pastoral power is acted on a group, as though a flock of sheep, and as such the uniformity may also reflect influence on a group led by religious rather than state discipline.
For instance, the existence of identical graves in other areas of Arnos Vale suggests under certain circumstances or with certain opportunities one could opt out of being laid in the Sailors’ Corner, exemplifying a multidirectional movement of power and jurisdiction over one’s remains which does not solely depend on the state. This aligns further with Foucault’s (1982) thinking, and thus suggests burial in or out of Sailors Corner is dependent on disciplinary influences in the sailors’ posthumous matters.
Joseph Albert McGill
Foucault argues state power can act subtly through control of the intimate life. In Sailors Corner this manifests as most of the headstones being congregated there, away from their families, but also as the headstones of sailors not in the Sailors’ Corner, like Joseph Albert McGill (Figure 2). Sailors dying in Bristol during the Second World War, not putting their headstone in Sailors Corner, and still retaining their naval headstone in an unrelated plot exemplifies a level of conformity to these norms from not only themselves but their families and estates, as it becomes clearer a member of such oversaw the sailor’s will. This also shows the leading of a different group in these subtle forms of power.
However, although these sailors died in Bristol hospitals, that does not mean they were Bristol inhabitants who would have had family plots in which to be buried: their presence in Arnos Vale at all does suggest instead a Foucauldian subjectivity that would trump this suggestion – their militaristic life was chosen over their familial. Their presence in a military site marks them one-dimensionally as soldiers posthumously, but their presence in a site in Bristol ties their citizenship and their salvation explicitly to the place of their last service, regardless of any familial ties. This works to subjectify them as in service to the state over any other institution and is a further example of Friedman’s display of how the state can exercise control over intimate life, only in a different context.
On his family’s headstone Joseph McGill is considered first a husband, whereas on his sailor’s headstone he is considered most in his connection to the navy. The phrasing on the headstone is particularly subjecting, with Joseph McGill’s occupation in the navy not mentioned, only his rank – the cohort he was part of represented in a record of which ship he served on. The demarcation of ship creates a uniformity and group further to the one relating to norms of routine and the pastoral: each sailor is uniform in death in the Sailors’ Corner, but each was uniform in life as identifiable solely as part of a whole ship, returning to ideas of a group. Further, the inclusion of rank allows for a posthumous exercise of power between those buried, continuing to display power as diffuse. Overall, McGill’s plot suggests the creation of several directions of Foucauldian subjectivity.
For King and Country
Pastoral power becomes most explicit when considering the United Kingdom during the Second World War as a Christian state. State power and the power of the Church exist nearly as one and the same, with much political overlap, such as the presence of bishops in the House of Lords. To serve King and Country, then, as the sailors in the Sailors’ Corner had sworn to do, was to serve a pastoral power and a state power at once, this power thus being multidirectional and subtle in its complexities. There is material evidence in the gravesite for this position of equal prioritisation in the choice of engravings on the sailors’ headstones. Joseph McGill’s (Figure 2) features an anchor and a crucifix at roughly the same size. This suggests an equal importance of both service to the country and faith being pushed by the norms of culture (including symbols) of the military at the time, as well showing the tight partnership of church and state being exercised to create this specific subjectivity.
A second example of pastoral power is the countryside setting of Arnos Vale. A common thread among more propagandising military literature speaks of being granted peace in the rich earth and flowing pastures of the United Kingdom, such as in “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke or “And did those feet in ancient time” by William Blake. In these situations, the aspect of pastoral power as priestly salvation comes through the rural as conducive to spiritual health and ultimate peace. This connects salvation to a green landscape, like in Idyll and Arcadia, within the context of a burial fit for a British defender. In this way, Arnos Vale’s landscape perfectly encapsulates the promise of the pastoral.
Conclusion
Foucault’s approach to self-discipline and pastoral power, particularly its application by Garcia, is very useful in understanding the networks of self-discipline present in a military setting, even one without any active personnel, like a gravesite. This is certainly true of the United Kingdom, where the State and the Church for a long time were valued as equals, creating a unique intersectional subjectivity of soldiers.
Developed from coursework in Social Theories unit at the University of Bristol Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Author
Imogen McAra is an MPhil student in Anthropology focusing on English Change Ringing.
