How do we teach and learn the human experience of war? How far removed is this experience from a classroom? This article uses these questions as the starting point for an investigation into the presence/absence of war experience, the effects of narratives distancing war, and the consequences of challenging these narratives. It draws on the experience of an undergraduate module at the University of Kent that investigates the human experience of war in which students were asked to reflect on the question of distance between those living “war experiences” and their lives in a small British city. Unexpectedly in 2015, several students argued that this distance was the lecturer’s construction. By making war personal – without any of them having experienced a “warzone” – the students chose to argue that war was also their experience. This response directly challenges an established narrative in International Relations that the West has been essentially at peace since World War II, a narrative that obscures the fundamental role of war experience in the lives of ordinary citizens. It leads to a broadened understanding of war experience that has important conceptual, political, and normative implications in the study of war and on our political responsibility in the everyday.

中文翻译：

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“战争在哪里？我们是战争。” 在课堂上教与人类的战争经历

我们如何教与学人类的战争经验？这种体验与教室有多远？本文以这些问题为出发点，来研究战争经验的存在与否，叙事远离战争的影响以及挑战这些叙事的后果。它借鉴了肯特大学一个本科课程的经验，该课程调查了人类的战争经历，其中要求学生反思那些生活在“战争经历”中的人们与他们在英国一个小城市中生活之间的距离问题。出乎意料的是，在2015年，几名学生争辩说，这种距离是讲师的建构。通过使战争变得个性化，而没有一个人经历过“战区”，学生们选择辩称战争也是他们的经历。这种回应直接挑战了国际关系中既定的叙述，即自第二次世界大战以来西方基本上处于和平状态，这种叙述掩盖了战争经验在普通公民生活中的基本作用。它导致人们对战争经验有了更广泛的了解，这对战争研究和我们日常的政治责任具有重要的概念，政治和规范意义。