This paper explores the (re)production of embodied gendered and racialised identities as part of commemorations devised by the Scottish government to mark the Centenary of WWI, 2014-18. In particular, we demonstrate how the Centenary has re-established Scotland's key contribution to British military power instead of providing a platform for a broader discussion of British wars and Scotland's role therein. Our analysis posits that this reframing was achieved through the (re)production of a gendered polarisation between white 'dead' soldier-heroes, 'local lads' and bearers of a 'proud Scottish military tradition'; and women as embodiments of patriotic motherhood. We further explore the deployment of specific discursive and performative means to transform Dr Elsie Inglis, the only woman whose contribution was singled out by WW100 Scotland, into a patriotic war heroine. This was achieved by the militarisation of her work; the obscuring of identity, class-and race-based hierarchies within women's war-work; and, finally, through the subversion of feminist ideas and practices in Inglis' work for the Scottish Women's Hospitals. Lastly, we reflect on the gendered legacy of the Centenary, emphasising the necessity for critical engagement with Britain's wars and Scotland's role therein.

Drawing on analysis of learning materials, interviews and ethnographic observations of Scottish education, we analyse how projects aimed at teaching children to remember wars instil war-normalising logics through (a) substitution of self-reflective study of conflict with skill-based knowledge; (b) gendered and racial stereotyping via emphasis on soldier-centric (Scottish/British) nationalisms, localisation and depoliticisation of remembrance; (c) affective meaning-making and embodied performance of ‘Our War’. Utilising Ranciere-inspired critical pedagogy, we explore opportunities for critical engagement with the legacy of conflicts.

This article examines the specific, gendered discourses, which can be uncovered within political apologies for conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and sexualized torture. While apologies are often perceived as either cynical, normatively “empty” gestures that seek to carry out strategic interests or as attempts by political actors to (albeit, often inadequately) emphasize their commitment to addressing past violence and associated cultures of impunity, a feminist analysis of two cases of apology for CRSV (the Japanese imperial “comfort women” and the United States’ infamous Abu Ghraib torture “scandal”) demonstrates that political apologies are rich affective–discursive, deliberately emotional sites at which CRSV is explained and/or accounted for by the state. Specifically, I trace how political apologies operate to discursively and affectively claim and renounce institutional responsibility for CRSV through the common-sense but “slippery” gendered logics of rational/emotional and public/private.

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