Screening: Pictures from A Revolution: A Memoir of the Nicaraguan Conflict.
-Susan Meiselas.
Meiselas photographed the civil war in Nicaragua and then returned to the subjects in her portraits, trying to track them down, 10 years later. She presents them with the photograph she took, outlining previous to her encounter with them why and how she photographed the scene followed by a non-invasive inquiry with the subject and the subject's family on how they felt to be a part of the event taking place within the photograph. Each photograph provides a narrative construction. The narrative construction prompts the viewer to contemplate memory and memory's place in describing a cultural conflict.
-Susan Meiselas.
Meiselas photographed the civil war in Nicaragua and then returned to the subjects in her portraits, trying to track them down, 10 years later. She presents them with the photograph she took, outlining previous to her encounter with them why and how she photographed the scene followed by a non-invasive inquiry with the subject and the subject's family on how they felt to be a part of the event taking place within the photograph. Each photograph provides a narrative construction. The narrative construction prompts the viewer to contemplate memory and memory's place in describing a cultural conflict.
It begs the question: How do we retrospectively approach Meiselas’ project while maintaining an understanding of Avishai Margalit’s Ethics of Memory? In Ethics of Memory, Margalit writes that our moral relationships are thin entities of behaviour, but ethical relationships align with a responsibility to care; it promotes empathy which contains more depth.
In retrospect, we should use this thickened perspective of memory when recalling the many travesties that occurred as a result of military dictatorships which swept through many Latin American countries during 1960s-1980s. One prejudice that this usually evokes is that human rights are of a “Western” and “privileged” and “new” ideology, but that is an inaccurate statement. Remember that ancient Greek city-states had natural law. (Think back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and more). As well, a notable period in time was the “Enlightenment.” There are various eras in which human rights was explored whether by philosophers, theologians, or even ruling politicians. The following is a very brief outline of a few of those epochs:
1st: Culminations of writings from the Enlightenment Period. This was the classic era of civil and political rights.
2nd generation: Economic and Social Rights movement.
Progressive reform in the U.S.A.; WWII to address the genocide instated by Hitler; 1st Pan-African Peace Conference; League of Nations; Gandhi and peaceful activism.
The ontological question here is why should we care about something or someone we have nothing in common with? Why care for others? Why care for international movements?
3rd Generation: Experiential/collective rights. Post-colonialism, women’s movement; disability movement; child right’s movement, etc… People put aside difference to fight for something collectively.
Earth Summit, for example, in 1992 during which 150 presidents appeared brought the media and attention. Two conferences, NGOs. English becomes lingua franca. NGOs realize at this point that the UN is a platform upon which they could mobilize shame and thus become empowered.
4th Generation: International Jurisdiction. Legal perspective. Growing ability for persecution. Creating international tribunals above and beyond the nation-state.
When human rights investigators or reporters consider Latin America’s history of military dictatorships, in the future, they should aim to gather information about torture murders, disappearances, and disperse the news internationally and mobilize and ricochet back to the country of origin as well as open up political participation. When this awareness and political participation shifts (using the term “political” as a loose understanding of the system of power, municipality, and authority based on sovereign mandates), the “collective” experience is to obtain political participation rights.
When political rights are restored to the citizen, it DOES NOT GUARATEE social and economic reform.
Imagine Nicaragua in June 1978 (beginning of “The Insurrection.”) Sandinistas organized a revolt against the Somoza regime, fighting against automatic weapons with poor wages. The National Guard was overthrown within a year, but then a cultural war emerged. Every representation of the “other” is a partial construction of the author. Susan Meiselas conducted a very dignified photographic investigation in this respect. Some interviewed thought it was for nothing. There is so much going on in Meisela’s photos that she cannot see but which the actors can provide. They fill in the void. Meiselas extends the realm of ethics and tries to bring the premise “collective ethical memory” to the forefront.
and liberties we possess nor forsake the ones we aim to hold.
In the debate on ethics versus morality, we recall, under Avishai Margalit’s prose, that ethical relationships involve care, loyalty, and trust; they give birth to affiliation and identification; they are self-reflexive; they do not make judgments upon anecdotes. In Margalit’s book, he defines “Episodic Memory” as Retelling memories to empower the community and those who died in hopes of helping them imagine or remember what the moment was like before their lives were taken and the moment when the people were stripped of existence.
What characterized Meiselas as a relatable photo-ethnographer is that she tries to figure out where she fits in this ethical collective. In her documentary, she lets the viewer experience life from a Nicaraguan perspective and as a result, the viewer is incline to actively participate in caring about someone. Media can transform ethical relationships by using representation to engage in dialogue with victims.
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What should we remember in this world and how do we relate it to the ethical community?
“[…] Only nations capable of creating a political environment that embraces multiple political solutions for any situation are able to escape Argentina’s violence” (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell Without a Number 17).
When Timerman writes “the problem is not merely that I find it difficult to explain Argentina in comprehensible terms to outsiders, but that I myself perhaps am unable to understand her,” it provokes me to question if anybody is able at all to define their own country, or to even define the violence that betrays its beauty (15).
In Argentina, 30,000 people “disappeared” during the Dirty War. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo created an identity project which one the UNESCO PEACE PRIZE: Exhibition traveling the world. The exhibit features a portrait of the victims of the Dirty War and a mirror next to each one. (Often, when couples were murdered, babies were given to military officers to raise as their own.) When confronted with the mirror in this exhibit, we wonder, as a spectator
← What are we going to do? How are we complicit? Are we the child?
As a result, 1,000 DNA matches have been made. When the matches are verified, the photos are then removed.
In his autobiographical novel, Timerman relays to us,
In retrospect, we should use this thickened perspective of memory when recalling the many travesties that occurred as a result of military dictatorships which swept through many Latin American countries during 1960s-1980s. One prejudice that this usually evokes is that human rights are of a “Western” and “privileged” and “new” ideology, but that is an inaccurate statement. Remember that ancient Greek city-states had natural law. (Think back to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and more). As well, a notable period in time was the “Enlightenment.” There are various eras in which human rights was explored whether by philosophers, theologians, or even ruling politicians. The following is a very brief outline of a few of those epochs:
1st: Culminations of writings from the Enlightenment Period. This was the classic era of civil and political rights.
2nd generation: Economic and Social Rights movement.
Progressive reform in the U.S.A.; WWII to address the genocide instated by Hitler; 1st Pan-African Peace Conference; League of Nations; Gandhi and peaceful activism.
The ontological question here is why should we care about something or someone we have nothing in common with? Why care for others? Why care for international movements?
3rd Generation: Experiential/collective rights. Post-colonialism, women’s movement; disability movement; child right’s movement, etc… People put aside difference to fight for something collectively.
Earth Summit, for example, in 1992 during which 150 presidents appeared brought the media and attention. Two conferences, NGOs. English becomes lingua franca. NGOs realize at this point that the UN is a platform upon which they could mobilize shame and thus become empowered.
4th Generation: International Jurisdiction. Legal perspective. Growing ability for persecution. Creating international tribunals above and beyond the nation-state.
When human rights investigators or reporters consider Latin America’s history of military dictatorships, in the future, they should aim to gather information about torture murders, disappearances, and disperse the news internationally and mobilize and ricochet back to the country of origin as well as open up political participation. When this awareness and political participation shifts (using the term “political” as a loose understanding of the system of power, municipality, and authority based on sovereign mandates), the “collective” experience is to obtain political participation rights.
When political rights are restored to the citizen, it DOES NOT GUARATEE social and economic reform.
Imagine Nicaragua in June 1978 (beginning of “The Insurrection.”) Sandinistas organized a revolt against the Somoza regime, fighting against automatic weapons with poor wages. The National Guard was overthrown within a year, but then a cultural war emerged. Every representation of the “other” is a partial construction of the author. Susan Meiselas conducted a very dignified photographic investigation in this respect. Some interviewed thought it was for nothing. There is so much going on in Meisela’s photos that she cannot see but which the actors can provide. They fill in the void. Meiselas extends the realm of ethics and tries to bring the premise “collective ethical memory” to the forefront.
and liberties we possess nor forsake the ones we aim to hold.
In the debate on ethics versus morality, we recall, under Avishai Margalit’s prose, that ethical relationships involve care, loyalty, and trust; they give birth to affiliation and identification; they are self-reflexive; they do not make judgments upon anecdotes. In Margalit’s book, he defines “Episodic Memory” as Retelling memories to empower the community and those who died in hopes of helping them imagine or remember what the moment was like before their lives were taken and the moment when the people were stripped of existence.
What characterized Meiselas as a relatable photo-ethnographer is that she tries to figure out where she fits in this ethical collective. In her documentary, she lets the viewer experience life from a Nicaraguan perspective and as a result, the viewer is incline to actively participate in caring about someone. Media can transform ethical relationships by using representation to engage in dialogue with victims.
---------------------------------------------------
What should we remember in this world and how do we relate it to the ethical community?
“[…] Only nations capable of creating a political environment that embraces multiple political solutions for any situation are able to escape Argentina’s violence” (Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell Without a Number 17).
When Timerman writes “the problem is not merely that I find it difficult to explain Argentina in comprehensible terms to outsiders, but that I myself perhaps am unable to understand her,” it provokes me to question if anybody is able at all to define their own country, or to even define the violence that betrays its beauty (15).
In Argentina, 30,000 people “disappeared” during the Dirty War. The Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo created an identity project which one the UNESCO PEACE PRIZE: Exhibition traveling the world. The exhibit features a portrait of the victims of the Dirty War and a mirror next to each one. (Often, when couples were murdered, babies were given to military officers to raise as their own.) When confronted with the mirror in this exhibit, we wonder, as a spectator
← What are we going to do? How are we complicit? Are we the child?
As a result, 1,000 DNA matches have been made. When the matches are verified, the photos are then removed.
In his autobiographical novel, Timerman relays to us,
A journalist asked me how freedom feels. I still do not feel it. I’m repressing the sensation of freedom because I fear that, otherwise, I may find myself relinquishing the profound marks imprinted on me, imprints that must be relieved in order to be relinquished.Recognizing one’s freedom unquestionably means recognizing how you obtained it. We must not forget to recognize the freedoms
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