ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the ghost of the warrior acts as a ‘semiotic that combine[s] knowledges, practices, and power to shape how we map our worlds and understand actual things in those worlds. It discusses some different ways and places that the ghost of the warrior appears, illuminating the way that the current styles and structures of military masculinity are laid across historical/mythological accounts, figures from the past/possibilities for the future, social/cultural/psychological elements and hierarchies that dis/empower. The type of military technology, therefore, is implicated in the kind of behaviour and attributes deemed desirable in the warrior, and different kinds of masculinity which needed to be performed to gain the warrior status. The warrior, regardless of how s/he is conceived, is always enacting the masculine role that is constructed in opposition to the feminine. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the overarching theme of masculinity that interweaves through the various figurations outlined in the ghost hunt.
