{"id":2784,"date":"2019-08-20T20:29:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T20:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=2784"},"modified":"2019-08-20T20:47:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T20:47:00","slug":"images-in-genocide-studies-theoretical-and-methodological-considerations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/images-in-genocide-studies-theoretical-and-methodological-considerations\/","title":{"rendered":"Images in Genocide Studies: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Genocide studies has<\/g> always been characterized by its interdisciplinarity. The consolidation in the last few decades of visual studies (including film and media) as academic fields, has allowed for a far more rigorous analysis of images of genocides that rests upon formal and semantic expertise specific to audio-visual representation. Thus, it is no longer a matter of invoking images as illustrations, but rather of wondering in what ways they contribute both to the knowledge of events and to the transmission of memory, whether individual or collective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To interpret images of genocide consequently involves a double competence, which puts genocide specialists (historians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, among others) and image analysts (semiologists, film or photography historians, new media specialists) in a separately delicate situation. The task demands the command of theory and methods within multiple scholarly fields, including specific instruments for the analysis of visual texts. The question continues to be: what can the image contribute \u2013as iconography and as a visual narrative\u2013 to the comprehension of genocide and mass violence that could not be gained from other available documents which were traditionally studied by the discipline of history. This is a far reaching<\/g> and complex question, and therefore its answers must be both ambitious and open to discussion and contestation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

To probe this question my colleague Vicente\nS\u00e1nchez-Biosca, and I have curated a special issue of the International Association of Genocide Scholars\u2019\njournal<\/a> dedicated to the exploration of\nimages in genocide studies \u2013 with a special focus on memory \u2013 and its\nmethodological considerations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou Could See Rage\u201d: Visual Testimony in\nPost-genocide Guatemala <\/em>by Lacey M. Schauwecker. The author\nanalyses the link between narrative and audio-visual testimonies to study the\nGuatemalan genocide, using the notions of visuality and countervisuality. In\nthis context, she examines how survivor Rigoberta Mench\u00fa and performance artist\nRegina Jos\u00e9 Galindo utilize the testimony to express rage. Thereby, Schauwecker\nassociates this type of testimony with the witnesses\u2019 right to testify on their\nown terms beyond institutional processes and imperatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nineteen Minutes of Horror: Insights from the Scorpions Execution Video<\/em> by Iva Vuku\u0161i\u0107 is the third article. In there, the author\nnotes that the video recorded by the Scorpion unit during the Srebrenica\ngenocide in the summer of 1995, provides unique insights into the nature of the\ncrime, as well as the behavior of the perpetrators, and it constitutes a\nsignificant contribution to our knowledge of the events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christophe Busch\u2019s\narticle focuses on photographs taken by Nazi perpetrators. In Bonding\nImages: Photography and Film as Acts of Perpetration<\/em> the author analyses\nhow photography is utilized to create an in-group, noting that, as images are\nperformative, the imagery bound the in-group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The figure of the perpetrator is also analyzed by Ana Laura Ros in her analysis of the documentary\nfilm El Mocito. <\/em>In her article El Mocito:  A Study of Cruelty at the Intersection of\nChile\u2019s Military & Civil Society. <\/em>The author argues that the film poses\nquestions about responsibility for, and complicity with, the cruelty that took\nplace during the military regime and beyond, which all members of Chilean\nsociety must consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Vicente S\u00e1nchez-Biosca\u2019s article, Challenging Old and New Images Representing the Cambodian Genocide: \u2018The Missing Picture\u2019<\/em>, the author examines the film “L\u2019image Manquante” by Rithy Panh to highlight the way in which the French-schooled Cambodian director approaches the classical question inherited from the Holocaust of the non-representability of a genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Cockroaches, Cows\nand \u201cCanines of the Hebrew Faith\u201d: Exploring Animal Imagery in Graphic Novels about\nGenocide<\/em>, Deborah Mayersen suggests that graphic novels about genocide\nfeature a surprisingly rich array of animal imagery. While there has been\nsubstantial analysis of the anthropomorphic animals in Art Spiegelman\u2019s Maus<\/em>,\nMayersen argues that the roles and functions of non-anthropomorphized animals have\nreceived scant attention. In this vein, in her article she carries out a\ncomparative analysis of ten graphic novels about genocide to identify and\nelucidate the archetypical functions of nonanthropomorphized animals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nora Nunn\u2019s article, The\nUnbribable Witness: Image, Word, and Testimony of Crimes against Humanity in\nMark Twain\u2019s King Leopold\u2019s Soliloquy (1905)<\/em>, studies the crimes committed\nin the Belgian Congo Free State through the work of Mark Twain. The author\nsuggests that this text aimed to evoke its Euro-American audience\u2019s empathy by\nactivating their imaginations. In this way, Nunn considers how the visual\nimagery in Twain\u2019s text engenders questions about fact, testimony, and witnessing\nin the realm of human rights and mass violence<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final article, Memory and<\/g> Distance: On Nobuhiro Suwa\u2019s A Letter from Hiroshima <\/em>byJessica<\/g> Fernanda Conejo Mu\u00f1oz, examines the short film\u2019s various memory strategies regarding the atomic bombing in the Japanese city referenced in the title. Conejo Mu\u00f1oz argues that this film is a reflective game whose approach to the past is based on distancing effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I encourage you to view the special issue of the journal and continue to explore the significance and role of images in genocide and mass violence studies. Our edited volume of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal<\/a> was published last year, and is freely accessible through the International Association of Genocide Scholars website<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lior Zylberman has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (UBA), is a professor of Sociology (UBA) and a researcher at the CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council) and at the Center for Genocide Studies (UNTREF). His research topic is the representation of genocides in documentary film and he has published numerous articles on the subject. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Genocide studies has always been characterized by its interdisciplinarity. The consolidation in the last few decades of visual studies (including film and media) as academic fields, has allowed for a far more rigorous analysis of images of genocides that rests upon formal and semantic expertise specific to audio-visual representation. Thus, it is no longer a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2081,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96689],"tags":[362],"class_list":["post-2784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-filmbook","tag-images"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}