© Lines, 2006 What image for the death of the witness?
Marc Nichanian Conference in New York
by Aram Arkun
The Armenian Mirror-Spectator , 12.02.2011
NEW YORK - Currently an associate professor of cultural studies at Sabanci University Istanbul, after the Columbia, the literary critic Marc Nichanian gave a lecture on 3 February, at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, entitled "What an image for the death of the witness? "This paper was presented as part of the exhibition" Blind Date: New Encounters From The Edges Of A Train Empire "[Go to surprise new meetings on the sidelines of an ancient empire], inaugurated the same day.
To understand the presentation Nichanian, it is necessary to have some familiarity with European philosophy, particularly the discussion, past few decades, about the possibility and limits of "representation" in various forms of genocide, mass killings and other similar catastrophic events. In his previous works, including testing The Perversion historiographical (translated into English by Gil Anidjar - The Historiographic Perversion, 2008), with conviction Nichanian has ranked alongside those who believe not possible to describe the genocide and other similar events in the literature. He continued in this vein at this conference, considering what an image and its relationship the disaster and survival.
After a warm introduction by Neery Melkonian, project director Blind Dates, Nichanian outlines his argument, noting that a catastrophic event can not, according to him, be restored by means of historiography, because of its unique temporal structure - while not yet happened, so it can not be an event in the future. Second, the historiography is based on the evidence, yet, as the catastrophic event is the death of the witness can not be accountable written, historically speaking.
Nichanian how a work of art Aram Jibilian and Aaron Mattocks, using masks to present Arshile Gorky or his ghost in the house of the painter in Connecticut. The idea of a mask covering the absence of what he is supposed to cover Nichanian led to the concept of death mask, as a picture of the image.
Nichanian then quoted Siegfried Kracauer, a Jewish German theorist of mass culture, to who the real atrocities, such as the Gorgon Medusa, men paralyzed by fear blinding and therefore can not be contemplated directly. One can only admire their pictures. The movie screen (like maybe the mask of death) is this sparkling shield of Athena, allowing us to see, for example, what happened in Nazi concentration camps. Nichanian explained that the image is an apotropaic function, although Kracauer also assigns a redemptive function. She bought the real horror, by making it bearable, thus accessible.
Nichanian then dismissed the recent book by Georges Didi-Huberman, Images In Spite Of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz (1). Didi-Huberman argues that four photographs taken by the Sonderkommando in this camp refutes the idea that genocide - in this case, the Holocaust, and Auschwitz in particular - is unimaginable. Instead, we must understand the mechanism of pictures if you want to know what to do with our memory. The image is indeed a testimony to Nichanian - he probably would have added - all testimonials are images. Didi-Huberman scrap against those who think that the disaster does not belong to history and cons postmodernists in general.
Nichanian opposed naturally in terms of Didi-Huberman, considering that incredible resistance opposes the acceptance of death or destruction of the witness. The disaster is inherently erasing the reality of the fact, through the elimination of the witness. Nichanian developed: "The perpetrators know that at the heart of humanity itself is the witness and can testify. "The survivors of such disasters must deny the experience of the erasure or death of the witness (ie the witness destroyed in them) to continue to live. This means in essence that the survivors should deny the same disaster they have endured. Nichanian explained: "This denial has nothing to do with that of the perpetrator. This is a denial of self. As we know, Armenians never use the word "aghet", but "genocide" as if it were enough to name the event itself as a fact, that he was what he is. "
Nichanian remarked in passing that the Armenians have a passion for the image, not only as photographers but as novelists (eg Chahnour, and Vorpuni Bélédian). The A. avoided However, to address this issue in his speech.
Nichanian finally turned to the work of Maurice Blanchot the years 1940 and 1950. Blanchot is a writer and literary theorist whose work almost obsessed Jacques Derrida, French philosopher of Jewish origin and creator of the theory of deconstruction. In 1955, in The Space of Literature , Blanchot operates three references to the image. He writes that in literature, language has its own image. Second, the strangeness of the corpse is that of the image. When a person is alive, it keeps changing, but the corpse, He never changes and is therefore the perfect image of that person. Third, when a pan is damaged, it becomes its own image, not disappear anymore in its use, it remains pure appearance.
For Nichanian, the temporal structure of the disaster is illustrated in Blanchot's novel, entitled The Death Sentence . In the first part of the book, the death of the heroine, Jane, is suspended and continues to live another day. Similarly, the disaster lives in us, but not yet happened. It happens in the future as the event happened. Holocaust deniers and historians obey the call of the perpetrator and history by demanding the impossible - witness and images. Among those who survived the disaster, their identity as a witness is dead, because of the disaster. This is reflected in another work of Blanchot, The Madness of the Day , in which a character loses his sight, but survived an accident. He was interrogated several times about what happened, but his story does not prove anything, because everything was revealed long ago. The character can not forge a narrative from the events.
The insistence of doctors, asking the survivor of the accident to an account of this event is similar to those historians who seek to Armenian survivors to deliver a story of their own disaster, creating a " historiographical perversion. " The truth of the facts is a historical truth, but it is an impossibility in the case of what most of us call the Armenian genocide. According Nichanian, art and literature can find a creative way to transform the image perfect, because "dead" of the event (ie the testimony on the disaster) into something lively and interesting.
Note
1. Georges Didi-Huberman, Images still , Paris, Editions de Minuit, 2003, 235 p. Translated by Shane B. Lillis, University of Chicago Press, 2008, 248 p.
_____________
Source: http://www.mirrorspectator.com/pdf/The 20Armenian%%% 20Mirror-Spectator 20February% 2012,% 202011.pdf
Translation: © George Festa - 02.2011
The Perversion Of historiographical , Marc Nichanian, see also the analysis of Denis Donikian, in blog Little Encyclopedia of the Armenian genocide .
The Perversion Of historiographical , Marc Nichanian, see also the analysis of Denis Donikian, in blog Little Encyclopedia of the Armenian genocide .
0 comments:
Post a Comment