Drömmen som kraschade. Könade känslor och kroppar i medierapporteringen om Jas 39 Gripens krasch på Långholmen 1993

Abstract

On the 8th of August 1993, JAS 39 Gripen, the pride of the Swedish air force, crashed during an air show in downtown Stockholm. The pilot miraculously survived this accident, witnessed by half a million specta- tors, and no serious injuries were reported among the audience. This article draws on feminist theory in studies of international relations and a discourse analytical framework to reveal how gendered representations of emotions and bodies featured in, and contributed to, making meaning about collective identity and possible futures in the aftermath of the event. The empirical focus lies on the four major Swedish newspapers during the early 1990s, Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. The analysis shows that the crash triggered intense criticism of JAS, a costly state-industrial military project at the core of the Swedish welfare state project, and the historical policy of armed neutrality which relied on notions of defensive masculine protection. By doing so, the crash contributed to destabilize notions of defensive masculinist protection practiced through the armed neutrality policy during the Cold War period. These findings are not only relevant for our understanding of the past. By shedding light on how logics related to masculinist protection were de-stabilized in a period when Sweden’s first steps towards increased military cooperation with NATO were taken, the findings also provide important clues to our understanding of contemporary security developments.