In 1915 the French illustrated newspaper L’illustration featured a drawing by Paul Renouard. The picture showed a group of blinded French soldiers from the First World War tapping forward with uncertain steps and wooden cans. All of them were guided by a dazzling whirl of white nurses who looked upon the strange row of mutilated men with a mix of compassion and adoration. The illustration was entitled «ceux qui apprennent à être aveugles». The title suggests that after being physically blinded on the battlefield those soldiers had to face another and more challenging task in the aftermath of the war, namely that of being blind. All of them so to say had to incorporate their impairment, reorganize their identity and learn what is meant to be, to think and to behave as a blind man.

By means of this symposium we would like to reflect on the complex and multilayered relation between learning processes on the one hand and disabled identities on the other. In particular we'll try to contextualize the problematic and conflicting relationships between learning and disability with regard to the disabled veterans from the First World War – while the war was ongoing between 1914 and 1918 as well as during the Interwar period. In this way we would like to explore to what extent the pioneering work of David Gerber, Julie Anderson and Ana Carden-Coyne on the crossroad of military history and disability studies can be continued and pushed forward to new and undiscovered terrains or insights. Identity formation indeed has become a major theme in contemporary disability studies but up till now the underlying learning processes to a great extent have been neglected.

By examining the intersection of what Jeffrey Reznick has called ‘cultures of care’ and the emotional responses of disabled veterans with regard to the rehabilitative efforts all of the belligerent countries undertook during and after the war we would like to inquire the role played by learning processes in the formation of disabled identities more thoroughly.