In the CSMS podcast, various issues and themes related to research in the areas of total defence, military, and society are discussed. In the podcast, you meet researchers and practitioners who converse with each other on topics concerning security and defence. Welcome to listen.
The Action of Vulnerability - the Ability to Suffer as Part of the Soldier's Practical Knowledge
Here you can listen to the episode.
In this podcast, Joakim Svarheden talks with Jonna Hjertström Lappalainen about what it means to act in vulnerability. The starting point for the conversation is an article published by Lappalainen in the book Military Mission - Perspectives on Military Professional Knowledge. The book can be downloaded as a PDF (in Swedish) and the article "The Action of Vulnerability - the Ability to Suffer as Part of the Soldier's Professional Knowledge" is on pages 157 - 176.
In this podcast episode, Lappalainen makes connections between military stories from foreign missions in Bosnia with an existential philosophical perspective. What does it look like, the practical ability that involves actually being able to act and make judgments in extremely vulnerable situations? Among other things, via the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Lappalainen reflects on how suffering, the ability to endure, to passively withstand, can also be used as a perspective to understand what military professional knowledge in sharp situations entails.
Jonna Hjertström Lappalainen is a researcher and lecturer at the Centre for Practical Knowledge at Södertörn University. She earned her PhD in 2009 in theoretical philosophy with a dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard and The Individual. She has previously worked with practical knowledge among healthcare staff, teachers, artists, and police officers. Today, Jonna is deputy head of the department for police work at Södertörn University.
Joakim Svarheden is a research assistant at CSMS and editor for Mission Podcast.
"We view vulnerability as a potential suffering and try to reduce or remove it. (...) However, some forms of vulnerability or pain cannot be removed no matter how much we wish to. We cannot remove aging and death, we cannot remove the fact that life consists of failure, that daring means vulnerability and possible suffering. Nor do we seem, despite traditions, customs, and established relational rules, able to remove the fact that interactions with others mean we can be hurt or happen to hurt them. Although we cannot avoid this, we often treat our vulnerability as something we must insure or protect ourselves from. We arrange our modern lives as if every form of suffering is first and foremost a defect, something that must be removed and not something we must learn to relate to. We prefer to keep the thought of death out of sight. Illness and death are placed in institutions away from the sight of healthy people. This is how we relate to many things in existence. We dwell on the pleasurable and good and start to make noise and get busy when the difficult intrudes."
A short excerpt from the article “The Action of Vulnerability - the Ability to Suffer as Part of the Soldier's Practical Knowledge” by Jonna Hjertström Lappalainen. The article is published on pages 157-176 in the book Military Mission - Perspectives on Military Professional Knowledge (2018). The book is in Swedish and can be downloaded as a PDF here.
