Visualizing War: Emotions, Technologies, Communities

Description

Wars have always been connected to images. From the representation of war on maps, panoramas, and paintings to the modern visual media of photography, film, and digital screens, images have played a central role in representing combat, military strategy, soldiers, and victims. Such images evoke a whole range of often unexpected emotions from ironic distance to boredom and disappointment. Why is that? This book examines the emotional language of war images, how they entwine with various visual technologies, and how they can build emotional communities. The book engages in a cross-disciplinary dialogue between visual studies, literary studies, and media studies by discussing the links between images, emotions, technology, and community. From these different perspectives, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the nature and workings of war images from 1800 until today, and it offers a frame for thinking about the meaning of the images in contemporary wars. Visualizing War- Front Cover Visualizing War Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures Preface Notes Introduction Equivocal Emotions Emotions and Affects Emotional Technologies Emotional Communities Notes Bibliography PART I: Equivocal Emotions Chapter 1: Cropped Vision: Photography and Complicity in Women’s World War II Memoirs Introduction The Civil Gaze Erika Summ Inge Ochsenknecht Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 2: Horsemeat with Cucumber Salad: Laughing at the Images of War in Alexander Kluge’s Films Alexander Kluge’s Images of War The Aesthetics of the Fake Interviews Laughing at the Image of War The Horse in the Image of War Notes Bibliography Chapter 3: Max Beckmann’s Revenants and Ernst Jünger’s Drones: Vision and Coolness in the Interwar Period Introduction War Trauma and Giving Birth: Max Beckmann Beckmann’s Revenants Jünger’s Vision of Optical Distancing and Emotional Detachment or Coolness Jünger’s Drones Conclusion Notes Bibliography PART II: Emotional Technologies Chapter 4: Flat Emotions: Maps and Wargames as Emotional Technologies Introduction The Metapicture of Military Maps Emotional Technologies The Vehicle of Learning Training Emotions Digital Emotions Notes Bibliography Chapter 5: The Paradox of Total Immersion: Watching War in Nineteenth-Century Panoramas Introduction The Panorama as Mass Medium of the Nineteenth Century Total Immersion: Panorama as Presence The Panorama: Training for Future Wars Panorama: Pre-Modern Vision of History? Panorama as Paradox Notes Bibliography Chapter 6: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Drone Operators: Relying on Uncertainty in Omer Fast’s 5,000 Feet is the Best (2011) The Psychic Effects of Waging War on Screen Visual Proximity and Physical Distance Unsettling Certainty in Fast’s Semi-Documentary Displacement and Identification Notes Bibliography Chapter 7: Towards a Poor Cinema: The Performativity of Mobile Cameras in New Image Wars Introduction Iconic versus Imperfect Images of War Images as Events Image Wars Camera and Performativity New Videograms for a Revolution: The Uprising Singing for the Revolution: Return to Homs Poetic Confrontation: Silvered Water Poor Cinema’s Uncertain Futures Notes Bibliography PART III: Building Emotional Communities Chapter 8: Visualizing Community: A Look at World War II Propaganda Films Media Emotions The War Film Genre Sense of Community Believing in the World Riefenstahl: Media Technology as Fusion Capra: “What Put Us in the Uniform?” Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 9: From Warrior Heroes to Vulnerable Boys: Debunking “Soldierly Masculinity” in Tim Hetherington’s Infidel Photos Visualizing Brotherhood Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 10: Visualizing War in the Museum: Experiential Spaces, Emotions, and Memory Politics Visualizing War in the Museum Reconstructive Authenticity Multimedia Visualization and Political Master Narrative Synthesized Multiple Voices and Multimedia Visualization The Spatial-Geological Visualization of War and Humanity The Visualization of War Crimes via Photography Conclusion Notes Bibliography Chapter 11: War in the Age of Anti-Social Media The Napoleonic Legacy The Contemporary Mediascape Meet the New Spectacle, Same as the Old Spectacle The Art of the Mediascape Notes Bibliography List of Contributors Index