This paper draws from Silencios – a photography series by the Colombian artist Juan Manuel Echavarría. Silencios comprises more than 120 portrayals of abandoned schools due to armed conflict in Los Montes de María, Colombia. Sharing Echeverría’s belief that ‘these chalkboards have lessons to tell us about war’, the author of this paper advocates for the pedagogical use of Silencios to promote and support memory works in Colombia. The present analysis acknowledges that hegemonic memories and narratives have a negative impact on conflict-affected societies due to their authoritarian and oppressive character.
Therefore, the pedagogical use of Silencios seeks to ignite multiple narratives and counterhegemonic memories that might emerge as the public interacts with the photography. The visuals, in this sense, become an educational opportunity to stimulate reflection and resistance against the monopoly of the past in a country that is currently emerging from conflict. In this paper, the abandoned schools are considered as memory sites, and as renewed learning spaces to stimulate reflections and debates upon the armed conflict. Silencios can contribute to peacebuilding efforts by bringing up the possibility to reconsider essentialist conceptions of peace, memory, and pedagogy, that might hinder potential venues for enduring peace in Colombia. 相似文献
Addressing the absence of second-generation exiles from Southern Cone post-dictatorship memory scholarship, this paper compares two documentaries: Hora Chilena, about the British-Chilean community and Tus padres volverán, depicting Uruguayan exiles across Europe – both made by and/or about the no retornadxs (those who did not return to their countries of origin after dictatorship). The paper deploys documentary to offer a nuanced depiction of the hijxs del exilio (children of exile), finding them to be distinct to both the protagonist generation and their second-generation peers in the Southern Cone. By incorporating neglected voices and reframing post-dictatorship memory in Europe, the paper challenges memory narratives about second-generation exile. 相似文献
In Nona Faustine’s photo series of self-portraits, White Shoes, the artist’s body becomes the agent in exposing the instability of racialized historical geography. Faustine revisits New York City’s landmarks to address what is missing or made invisible: a slave ship, a fugitive woman’s rebirth, or African burial grounds. Making herself visible where she is supposed to remain invisible, she highlights the unacknowledged connection between national wealth, nationalism, geography, and black labor. She discloses the topography of her travels as a changeable terrain, where one slips from the national iconic to ambiguous and finally, to the sacred. I suggest that Faustine doesn’t seek to democratize the extant historical maps, but to shift the terms of reading the city’s geography. She lifts the boundaries between the polarized pathways of knowing – the secularized and the sacred, the living and the dead, the verifiable and the missing. This shift is also made possible by the medium of photography and a feminist turn towards pleasures in one’s body. As Faustine comes to terms with the psychic and cultural inheritance of the diaspora, she moves from the collective body of pain towards black women’s pleasure in their own bodies without purging the history of sexual trauma. 相似文献
The documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto talks to Catherine Fowler about her latest film The Day I Will Never Forget (2003) about female genital mutilation (FGM) in Africa. Longinotto’s films have consistently interrogated our understanding of womens’ place in the world, and her latest film is no exception. She discusses how she found her subjects: Fardohsa, a midwife who has been campaigning against FGM, a group of girls who have (successfully) taken their parents to court in order to prevent FGM being practised, and Fouzia, a girl of nine who reads a poem that she wrote the day after she was circumcised, asking her mother to explain why she put her daughter through such a painful experience. Longinotto also discusses the ethical issues raised by her filming of a circumcision of two sisters, and the wider issues that her film engages: the powerless position of women in African societies, the confusion of religion and culture in discussions of FGM, and the impact of saying ‘no’ to this practice. 相似文献