Canada’s Military and the Post-heroic Condition

This chapter is using an institutional theory approach to explore how heroism and its mobilizing function operated during the Canadian participation to the now defunct United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali in 2018–2019 (MINUSMA). The case was selected as it was the first substantive mission where the Canadian military was put in harm’s way since it disengagement of the Afghan mission in 2011. The academic literature on Canadian peacekeeping is analyzed to uncover central institutional logics both at the normative and cognitive levels, which were then used to survey the press coverage of the Canadian mission in Mali, leading to, during and afterward (2015 to 2022). The main findings are that post-heroic heroes were indeed culturally and socially produced, but it did not lead to any mobilizing functions of the hero as an archetype in the Canadian society. In fact, it had no impact on the Canadian government’s ongoing disinterest in military affairs, sustained in part by other wider unconscious societal forces. It concludes that Canada is an example of maladaptation to the post-heroic condition, which extends this notion beyond the original concept.