'Knights of the Air': Joyful Slaughter and the Pleasures of Moral Survival

In her paper, Janet Lee investigates ‘joyful slaughter’, the pleasures of sanctioned killing, as represented in diaries and letters written during combat by World War I airmen of the British Royal Flying Corps. Killing is suggested as only one, and potentially the least pleasurable, aspect of combat scenarios by examining its connection to a range of ‘regulating’ and ‘mobilising’ emotional practices centred in the interdependent geographies of chivalrous duty and exhilarating flight. The author makes the case for the triumph of joyful survival over joyful slaughter as a consequence of the moral performance of killing rather than being killed.