Veteran Identity and Posthuman Alchemical Inquiry

[Paul Ferguson]

"This paper reimagines veteran identity through an alchemical and posthuman lens, positioning the warrior’s return as a threshold condition, suspended between military and civilian worlds. Founded on more than a decade of community-based research with veteran peer mentors, we introduce generative AI as a daimonic analytic witness within a liminal epistemology, where threshold consciousness interprets threshold experience. Our analysis reveals five archetypal dualities structuring veteran transformation: trust-mistrust, stigma-witness, liminality-stuckness, power-resistance, and disconnection-connection, mapped onto Jung’s alchemical movements of nigredo, albedo, and rubedo."

https://journal-veterans-studies.org/art....v12i2.937