Hierarchies of Heroism: Captain Tom, Spitfires, and the Limits of Militarized Vicarious Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen the label of “hero” assigned to an expanded range of unexpected figures, from carers to supermarket delivery drivers, lauded for their selflessness. In Britain, however, none received the levels of public veneration experienced by the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, who became famous for completing a sponsored walk of his garden for his 100th birthday, raising £38.9 million for National Health Service charities. What can account for the resonance of an elderly war veteran in the context of a global health emergency? Contributing to nascent international relations scholarship on vicarious identity, ontological security, and militarism, in this article we develop the concepts “vicarious resilience” and “vicarious militarism” to explain why “Captain Tom” captured the British public imagination. While objects of vicarious identification are typically distinguished by their superior agency, we argue that the case of Captain Tom is interesting because it was not Moore's agency but his symbolism that made him a target for vicarious identification. Specifically, his military symbolism facilitated vicarious identification with Britain's mythologized wartime past aimed at assuaging ontological anxieties generated by the pandemic and boosting national resilience. However, the broader militarized pandemic response also reasserted gendered and racialized military heroism at a moment when the category of hero was being extended to civilian occupations. Finally, we note the limits of vicarious militarism in responding to ontological insecurity, including its tendency to generate anxieties of intergenerational insufficiency and its rhythmic/episodic character, concluding by commenting on the future trajectory of pandemic subjectivities.