ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 focuses on the remembered experience of soldiering in the war. The chapter starts by exploring the geography of “bush” and the processes by which it was shaped during the liberation struggle before turning to analyze the sensory memories of the body-landscape relationship during the war. The DFs’ accounts of the war, as I suggest, emphasize a “haptic” way of knowing that places the body at its center. Here, “haptic” is understood in a broad way to mean all the various sensory experiences that become integrated through the movement of the body as it engages with the world. Our senses thus put us “in touch” with the world and relate us to other sensing bodies. Moreover, touching involves a relation of reciprocity with other people and the natural environment; we cannot touch without being touched. This chapter explores how the “bush” in different ways “touched” the bodies of the ex-combatants, leaving its “unforgettable” marks in their memories. As it shows, during the war, the landscape was not a backdrop against which violent acts were perpetrated; the body-landscape relationship was often characterized by a violent tactility.
