‘Ten thousand lads with shining eyes are dreaming and their dreams are wings’: affect, airmindedness and the birth of the aerial subject

Abstract

This paper explores how the emergence of an aerial subjectivity — an airmindedness — was engineered, manufacturing a reactive and militarized subject-citizen who would defend and promote the nation. Questioning the tendency to see airmindedness as an abstract notion promulgated by messages and propaganda, this paper explores how the British population were made airminded by being encouraged to act and move in specific ways and in particular geographical contexts. Examining the bodily performances, physiological and affective techniques of training embarked upon, the paper departs from the symbolic performativity of mobile national subjectivities.