The Introduction opens with a description of the book’s intent and my position as an anthropologist examining the humanitarian field. I introduce the story of one war victim – Ismael – who presents in microcosm the unique aspects of the patients in the MSF Reconstructive Surgery Programme (RSP). I go on to explore the invisibility of the war-wounded, especially those who have never participated in combat. The Introduction continues with a discussion on the delivery of humanitarian surgery, a specific field in the larger world of humanitarian aid. I touch briefly on the history of MSF surgical programmes and capture some of the history of MSF’s surgical practices, which go back to the very origins of the organization itself. RSP is a programme that reflects the cumulative MSF experience. The Introduction concludes with an in-depth description of MSF’s RSP in Amman, Jordan. Currently, patients in the RSP, who often sustain critical injuries years before they are admitted to the hospital, have various levels of disability or have lived with significant post-surgical complications. The Introduction explores several of the aspects that make the RSP unique. Among them are surgical procedures focused on functional improvements, the months and sometimes years-long rehabilitation undergone by patients away from their home countries, the scale of the programme, and the multi-disciplinary treatment provided.

This final section is divided into three sub-sections and is concerned with collaboration in activism, writing, community and common purpose. I have worked with Swiss sociologist, novelist, poet, sculptor and artist Urs Jaeggi since the mid-1990s, and here are parts of collaborations with discussions around their making and enactment. There is also a consideration of ambiguity (‘textural ambiguity’ – with its text/texture ‘plays’) in the making of poems on photographs, and in photographs themselves in ‘On Textures of Ambiguity – a collaborative exhibition of poems and photographs [of Will Yeoman]’, in which the subtexts of this book come into relief: ‘I am fascinated by the way apparent ambiguities come about from not being able to position an ‘object’ in relation to other ‘objects’, to set something seen in the broader context of seeing – to show the other co-ordinates around a single point; the inability to show the GPS co-ordinates, so to speak, might actually tell us more about the locally specific than the vista image, the points of reference, the photograph of the broader landscape’. The act of displaying and exhibiting has been a theme across this Poetics Trilogy, with the curatorial act always in question. From collaborating with another writer/artist, the section moves into more personal poetic considerations regarding activism. Throughout the trilogy, I have used my own poems as ongoing ‘windows’ into practice, with specific usage in tension with the ambiguities of the language arrangement, the prosody, of the texts. And we ‘resolve’ into the contradiction of supporting a cause while objecting to some of its methods (as failing, to my mind, to take in some of the contradictions in a specific ‘protest’ action). This section, and the book (other than the conclusion which address all three volumes of the Poetics), concludes with communal statements of participatory activist poetics.

The introduction begins with a passage from Howard Carter’s narrative of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. Analysing Carter’s famous description of ‘wonderful things’, this section introduces many of the prominent qualities of the archaeological encounter explored throughout the book—including temporality, experimental form, aesthetic wonder, and transgression. The introduction then examines a passage from Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W.H. (1889, rev. 1921), in which the narrator asks whether we are ‘to look in tombs for our real life’, introducing the concept of archaeological discourse as a tool for examining modern subjectivity and ways of knowing the self and the world. The next section, ‘Other archaeologies’, explains how the book’s key figures and texts turn to archaeology to challenge normative historiographies and suggest more radical sensibilities, as well as to expose and undermine archaeology’s colonialist legacy. The next section turns to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘The Burden of Nineveh’ (rev. 1870) to introduce the civilisations and collections that infused the fin-de-siècle archaeological imagination. After a section devoted to chapter summaries, the introduction concludes by claiming that the literary and artistic engagements with archaeological discourse the book explores offer valuable archaeological epistemologies, forms of archaeological knowledge in themselves.

This chapter positions Great War artist Paul Nash alongside the modernist writer Mary Butts, and traces these artists’ prolonged engagement with archaeological discourse, exploring how across several genres (life-writing, essays, visual art, and the novel) they turn to the prehistoric landscapes of Great Britain to mediate the catastrophic incursions of modernity on the natural world and the human psyche. Nash’s prose and images during wartime also conjure scenes of uncanny archaeological ruin reminiscent of images of Pompeii—an association which is corroborated by other first-hand witnesses of No Man’s Land. The middle section of this chapter delves into this comparison, demonstrating how writers including Louise Mack (an Australian journalist), H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], and various soldiers reshape Victorian narratives of the volcanic destruction and archaeological discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum (by writers like Edward Bulwer Lytton) to historicise the war’s destruction. The chapter concludes with a look at contemporary excavations of First World War battlefields in France, revealing how contemporary writers and archaeologists are borrowing these same tropes as we uncover the First World warscape. Ultimately, these discussions reveal how archaeological imagery and narratives of ruin and rebirth helped writers and artists craft unofficial and dissonant historiographies of the First World War.

This brief coda considers how archaeological methods have changed since the mid twentieth century with the rise of aerial archaeology and remote sensing, and queries how representations of the archaeological encounter may likewise change to reflect the particular conditions of our own modernity. The coda connects Paul Nash’s use of aerial photographs of archaeological sites in his mid-twentieth-century paintings to recent re-valuations in both archaeology and literary scholarship of critical distance. Addressing how archaeologists during the Covid-19 pandemic have turned to remote data-collecting techniques, discussing the rise of distant reading practices, and considering the concept of ‘shadow sites’—shapes and structures made visible only at a distance and in certain light—this coda ponders how the shift from intimate, proximate excavation techniques to more distanced approaches might provide new ways of knowing and representing the past.

Chapter 5 responds to providers of care for patients with disabilities. It addresses questions about what takes place once a patient is discharged from hospital and how disabled patients live day-to-day. These issues led me to explore the notion of quality of life. Using the patients’ own definitions of quality of life, I examine how they perceive their lives today. The impact of treatment in the hospital on patients’ quality of life appears to be multidimensional. Many patients stress the immense difference the treatment made to their lives – talking about functional improvements that led to improved access to employment, for instance. Emotional relief was also reported, motivating my participants to become involved in more social interactions that, in turn, resulted in an improved sense of self-esteem and security. Improvements in the quality of life of the participants were, however, largely dependent on the participant’s own ability to adapt. Despite describing their struggle to find viable coping mechanisms, this chapter testifies to the great strength and resilience residing in each of them. It is obvious that participants do not look at their bodies purely through the lens of function. They attach a number of symbolic and social meanings to their injuries. Regardless of the role played by MSF or any other care provider, recovery is very much dependent on patient’s own agency, coping skills and creativity.

Fairy tales were communicated mainly in bourgeois households where religion was interwoven with romanticism. The popular notions of fairy tale history, current during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ever since Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm composed their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM), suffer from one major handicap: they are built on assertions rather than on evidence. The Magic Flight cluster demanded attention because it appeared to be the one story theme most represented in the KHM, with versions by Friederike Mannel, Dortchen Wild, Jeannette and Marie Hassenpflug and Ludowine von Haxthausen. Over the last few years fairy tale research has made great strides, although most of it is better available in German than in English, as is witnessed by standard works such as the multi-authored Enzyklopädie des Märchens and Walter Scherf's two-volume Märchenlexikon.

Chapter 3 examines events related to patients’ injuries and reports on typical incidents in the immediate aftermath of an injury. The chapter shows how patients carry a double burden: that of their injury and of the disruption to their family and social environment. We meet Ali, a Syrian patient. Retelling his personal history, Ali describes the risks taken by the wounded and by those who try to save them. Ali reports multiple losses: his health, social identity, loved ones, material objects, and sense of security and trust. Numerous scenarios experienced by other participants in the study tell of the ways their lives were changed in a matter of seconds. The majority of those injured in Syria were wounded in bombing raids from the air or by gunshot. Iraqis, in contrast, were mainly the victims of explosions. The narration style of each group indicates how they frame, understand, and feel about the injury event. But in all cases, the incidents related to the injuries certainly leave their mark. The subsequent struggle to access healthcare and a safe refuge adds to the toll. The chapter details the long and difficult journeys taken by the wounded leading them eventually to the RSP in Amman. They carry their painful, traumatized past with them.