If the work of the prosthesis is to create a new, ironic space of oscillation, one that posits both the indexical and symbolic poles in order to implode them ultimately into the space play, then one of the functions of that space is, among others, to cast doubt on the notion of a stable, objective reality. However, to undermine the ‘reality’ of wartime experiences would seem to go against at least part of the gist of the previous chapter: the pull of the past never lets up, the phantom pain never gives fair warning, and the weight of speaking for others is unrelenting. Thus, given the centrality of the reality of the past in the poetics this book puts forth, it would stand to reason that that reality is never called into question. And to a large degree that is indeed the case: the past never is called into question – Mena never doubts whether or not Kyle died in his arms, nor does Currall wonder whether or not he had indeed buried the dead. The past, then, is not a dream – ‘it’, to use the indexical, really happened. However, the reality that the past presents plays the role of reality in what would become the prosthetic text created in the wake of these events. Thus, at one and the same time, the past is the event that is so certain that it anchors the entire poetic machine, the index that makes concrete any generalised talk of ‘war’, and the past is that which is artistically transformed in the prosthetic act itself. I have already tackled this central function of the prosthesis, that it posits the index as the concrete time and place of events as well as transforming it into performance. What I did not yet state, however, is that the impact of that gesture toward the past can be understood only once we underline the central role the concept of reality has had in the discussion of war and of writing after war in the last century or so.

Reality has taken on several different shapes throughout the history of our conversation about war. The first, as already stated, is the function of the event as ‘real’ in the minds of post-war writers – that a specific event must be communicated, and that it be communicated truthfully or correctly.