Here is what I read to a crowd of people at Homegrown Cafe in Hamilton, ON, last night for the Time and Place: A Cultural Quarterly event. And what a great night is was. "This is a photograph I took in Rwanda last year as part of a course I was taking at Western. Part of the course included an intense, and condensed ten-day trip in which we visited the six national genocide memorial sites and about a dozen local, community sites. Before I get into my experience of the time and place in this photo, i want to take you back in time to the events that led to the creation of this space. In early April 1994, many of us were focused on or distracted by Kurt Cobain's sudden death, the first democratic elections in South Africa since the fall of apartheid, the spectacular, sensationalistic murder trial of OJ Simpson, while there was also the news of a small African country in Joseph Conrad's deep, dark heart of Africa (as the press would continually portray it), where government-backed militias unleashed a most horrific, brutal, carefully calculated and unprecedentedly swift genocide against the minority Tutsi population. From April 6 to July 4, in the space of 100 days, over 800,000 people were killed at the hands of the militia, government forces, the Rwandan police and army, and at the hands of neighbors, friends, and in some cases even family members. Some of you may remember this, or have learned more about it since then. Some of you may recall that a Canadian general, who has since become somewhat of a household figure, Romeo Dallaire, was the head of the UN Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda at the time, there to oversee peace negotiations between the extremist government and the rebels that had been in conflict for the previous four years. Some of you may also recall the controversy over the fact that UN soldiers were not allowed to intervene as it was against their mandate. This photograph is of a forest adjacent to one of the six national memorial sites. It is the site of the largest resistance against the genocidaires. The memorial site on the Bisesero hill overlooks the hilltop where the resistance fighters held off their perpetrators for nearly the full length of the genocide, only to be overcome in its last few days. The memorial site also overlooks a nearby village inhabited by a few of the survivors of that resistance group.
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Here is a critique I did. I thought I might as well publish it here the same way I did my essay (see previous post). It makes it easier for me to access, and it may allow more people to hit upon Sue Taits thought provoking perspective.
Art imitating death, and death on the Internet: A Critique of Sue Tait's "Visualising Technologies and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Screening Death" In a comparative exploration of representations of death on the Hollywood screen, versus images of soldiers posing with dead combatants posted on the Internet by coalition peers, Sue Tait (2009) turns the 'trophy'-photos-as-immoral stance on its head, arguing instead that the latter images do in fact enable a particular moral positioning. Here, she presents her perspective that says 'obscene' photos can actually be subversive to the military endeavor, drawing attention to actual human costs of war rather than celebrating victories over the enemy. Tait outlines how fictional films have been able to create a moral space around representations of death through specific cinematic techniques and even ultraviolent renditions coded as 'realistic' (p. 341). Particular coding encourages viewers to be repulsed by rather than attracted to war or violent death. Tait carries this perspective into her analysis of documentary films contain images of dying individuals. Through the curation of images and editorial techniques such as sound, music, and narration, the audience is guided to a particular moral position that has viewers questioning the circumstances that lead to violent deaths. For Tait then, once it is possible to see ultraviolent depictions of death as being ethical in the sense of 'bearing witness' to atrocity, it is no great leap to subsequently interpret 'trophy' photos by coalition soldiers as forming a similar moral stance. Tait sees these types of images as being subversive rather than supportive of the traditional military propaganda or news media reports (p.17). She claims within these images is the ability to question the true costs of war, such as war's "impact on the psyche of the soldier" (p.349). What Tait does not and perhaps cannot do is explain how other spectators might find the same moral point of view in looking at these images. With a large portion of film viewers finding entertainment value in Hollywood deaths (p. 339), it may be hard to overcome the sense of 'false witnessing' (celebrating the death of the enemy) in the soldier's photos if films such as Saving Private Ryan, originally meant to moralize against war (p. 343), are leading to similar celebratory responses (p. 347-348). Certainly new media enables broader access to these images, but in their uncurated, unmediated, raw form, the interpretations can be limitless. It is this openness of visual images, the ease with which they can be repurposed for alternative meanings, that Tait does not explore, but is central to her ability to find an ethical place within these images. Tait's mention that the US military have been rumoured to have bankrolled the removal of a select group of soldiers' trophy photos from the web (p. 349), suggests that she senses the US military recognizes the subversive nature of the images, thus having them removed to reduce peoples' chances to question the actual costs of war. Had Tait situated these images in a larger history of 'trophy' photos, from colonialism, to Native American persecutions, to lynchings, all the way through to the Abu Ghraib scandal, her conclusions about US military perspectives on these images may be different. Images like those from Abu Ghraib only become a scandal once in the international news and held up against the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention which protects the remains of the dead, a protocol that was not ratified by the US Government (p.347); a significance that Tait brings up, but does not use as a clue to explore the historical positioning of these images. It could be that, as Tait hints, the supposed silent bankrolling and removal of the more recent images by the US Military was to prevent the incident from becoming another international embarrassment. Yet the fact that the US social norms included trophy photos in the public realm for so long, including the images of Saddam's dead sons, and the ultimate trophy photo - the images of the dead Osama Bin Ladden - suggest that the US military are likely supportive, or at the very least publicly ambivalent, about them because in the end they support what is necessary for soldiers to kill: the dehumanization of the enemy (p.348). The article provided an excellent foundation in understanding the original intentions behind ultraviolent representations of death, particularly how they ultimately have been read more as entertaining because of the creation of a false witness rather than one who is bearing witness. In her ability to read moral positioning in the fictionalized, and formal documentary representations, Tait is able to carry this view into seeing soldiers' trophy photos as also ethically embodied. An exploration of the way new media can confuse interpretations, as well as open up such possibilities exponentially would be a way of extending her semiotic look at filmic representations into the Internet realm: the fact that images can be repurposed. A historical contextualization of trophy photos within the larger global colonialist and American racialist histories would lead to a more nuanced understanding of why such images proliferate and may be an integral, though morally troubling, part of military culture. Reference Tait, Sue. (2009). Visualising Technologies and the Ethics and Aesthetics of Screening Death. Science as Culture, 18(3), 333-353, September. As much as grant writing can feel like a chore, it is certainly a good way to feel really close to your research interests, something that is hard to feel when in the throws of coursework. What I was wondering though, while feeling a grant application was an unwanted distraction at this time, was how to integrate what has become a vital component of academic life with the requirements of the degree. The grant-writing process has proven to be quite enlightening and frustrating, and I feel I would have benefited from having had more formal opportunities to discuss, explore and simply focus on the application within a peer and mentor setting.
I found the process enlightening because it helped me work through my project in a concrete manner, at least more concrete than just etherial discussions (though certainly still not concrete in the sense of a complete proposal). The process was also enlightening in its reconfirmation of the commodified and politicized nature of academic work. As much as academics try to maintain freedom, there is certainly a way in which research is 'focused' and 'directed' through economic conditions. The process of completing this grant application was also frustrating because of this knowledge of the constraints and commodification of academia - notably the fact that so few of the applicants will receive this funding support. And frustrating also because the opportunities were slim in terms of being able to really work through my research plan. If the process were included in some way as a degree requirement (a small credit), then there would be the ability to create a formal course (if it's not done this way, it is easy to be 'too busy' to attend), or workshop in which this painful process can be made more collegial and productive. Without such a workshop, and for those who have the time and inclination to make some comments, here is a portion of my SSHRC application: What is a photograph of dying meant to be if not a way to bring us closer to Death? Can photographs accomplish this, and to what ends? For French philosopher Roland Barthes (1980), all photographs are flat Death, reflective of our (the 'modern West's') distanced, sterile experience of death. Once any living or dying being is photographed, they are instantly - at the click of a button - objectified, rendered unceremoniously dead. This, he goes on to explain, is the "asymbolic" way in which death is experienced, more specifically in his time, as an increasingly secular event (Barthes 1980, p.92). Extending this viewpoint, death today is medicalized and/or politicized - removing it even farther from natural or even a mystical eventuality - it is now a problem to be solved. The flatness Barthes envisions, however, does not coincide with the way in which visual representations also engage, raise awareness, engender solidarity, and generate empathy. Also, the experience of death is taking on new meaning as the ageing population increases. In my research, I will explore visual representations of dying as a way of reconciling the flattness of the photograph with the experience of dying, and argue for a more responsive and responsible humanitarian photography. The photograph may be, in Barthes' sense, one-dimensional, while the experience of photography is anything but. By experience I take my meaning from the sociability of photography (Edwards 2011) and the event of photography (Azoullay 2012). These conceptions refer to the implicit and explicit human relations and expectations that are generated, negotiated and contested through the act of creating & recreating (e.g., in the spectator's realm) photographs. Contemporary visual theory conceives the photographed subject as having a powerful political agency enabling their photographed selves, even if not taken with this intent, to become a political actor (Linfield 2010; Azoullay 2008). Despite this view, the positivist legacy of photography remains, resulting in images that still subjugate those photographed at the cost of loosing sight of the political issue (Campbell 2012). Thus, photography has a duality: Barthes' flat Death on the one hand, and a vitality and dynamism - a life of its own - on the other. A main question I seek to answer is the role imagination plays in this duality, and what it means for a humanitarian photography. Photos of death have a history of being understood as replete with political and moral stances. Whether to take action against an atrocity or generate new conceptions of humanity (Sliwinski 2011), there is no lack of imaginative space in such photographs. Despite the political power of these images, critics argue that the individuals in the images become reified forms of the political violence (Calain 2012; Campbell 2011; De Waal 1997). As static representatives of their historical moment, the critics claim, much supposed 'humanitarian' photography denies its subjects’ agency (Kleinman & Kleinman 1996; Campbell 2012). Though the photo may be used to bear witness to atrocity, to human suffering, the people within the images become the corporeal of the political situation rather than the agents of its change. We, the spectators on the other end, are the supposed action-takers. Certainly it is laudable that attention be paid to the political struggle, but at what cost? Certainly also, not all images in humanitarian or political struggles are exploitative and objectifying. Can such images be re-visioned and reimagined? Visual representations of EOL in high-resources countries have become a space of political action by the individuals in the images. Dying with dignity, palliative care, ageing and end of life have become ways of empowering the dying and raising awareness of this fact of life (Green 2008). Images of dying and death here are seen as representing a particular social justice issue: the right of everyone to die with minimal suffering. The individuals in these images are in the act of challenging the status quo. These new discourses are spilling over into the global geopolitical arena with issues like palliative care becoming a large area of focus for global health (Singer and Bowman 2002). To see dying as a global social justice issue repositions the perception of photos of dying in other political and socioeconomic contexts. Dying becomes an issue in itself, not only a referent to something else: herein lies a different imagination. |
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