“Subversive,Unannounced Non-Compliance”: A Pacifist-Soldier’s Poetic (Auto) Ethnography of Experiences in the Israeli Defense Forces

Abstract

The current article presents the experiences of a pacifist-soldier who was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in the 1980s. Using a poetic (auto) ethnographic mode of research, this article explores the ways in an individual with self-professed pacifist orientations responds and contends with realities of being drafted into an army and a situation which he ethically disagrees with. The poem follows the events and emotional responses to different aspects of being in the army and the strategic way in which agency was enacted under very restrictive social circumstances termed by the participant as “subversive, unannounced non-compliance.” The current poetic (auto) ethnography aims to contribute to the literature of soldier experiences and explicate one individual’s response to being drafted against his will into an army he did not identify or agree with.