[ecrea] CFA: Screening War | Diffractions - Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture

Diffractions - Graduate Journal for the Study of Culture

Issue 3 - September 2014

SCREENING WAR

Deadline for submissions: May 15 2014

If the Great War, whose centenary is commemorated this year, is often 
deemed as the birth of modern warfare, it is also the antechamber of 
modern war representation, laying the foundations of representational 
strategies that would become recurring in the visualisation of 
subsequent conflicts. Indeed, modern war is a product of both imaginary 
and material forces. As George Roeder has contended, war is a “way of 
seeing” (Roeder, 2006) couched in templates and prescriptions that 
organise the visual experience of war while at the same time containing 
the impact of its conduct. The visual mediation of war reflects 
ideological conceptions, manages anxiety and vents social fantasies. In 
fact, the recent visual history of war seems to mirror a growing demand 
for visibility, from Baudrillard’s claim that “the Gulf war did not take 
place” (Baudrillard, 1991) due to its contained imagery, to the 
pluralisation and dissemination of multiple images, from surveillance 
footage to soldier’s private videos, as the case of Abu Ghraib has shown 
not so long ago.

At the same time, this demand for visibility is often hampered by 
dynamics of opacity that regulate and obstruct the visualisation of war 
in spite of the proliferation of warfare images. In addition, as many 
authors have begun to argue, images themselves have become a central 
instrument not only for understanding war but also to actually waging 
war, replacing techno-war as the dominant warfighting model (Mitchell, 
2011; Roger, 2013). With new logics of creation, consumption and 
reproduction emerging within a convergence culture, the conditions of 
seeing and showing war are nevertheless haunted by past conflicts and by 
visual reconceptualisations of them. This issue aims at reflecting upon 
the manifold ways war has been brought to the screen in various genres 
and at different historical moments.

Themes to be addressed by contributors may include but are not 
restricted to the following:

- Audiovisual representation of war past and present

- Artistic renditions of war

- Terror and spectacle

- Cyber war, surveillance, inside views of war

- Convergence, post-convergence and participatory culture

- Representations of captivity

- Visibility and opacity of war

- Violent images and images of violence

- Reporting war and the ethics of seeing

- Agency, resistance and citizenship

- War iconography across the ages

- War and (post-)memory

- War and gender

- Homefronts and homecomings

- Aftermath, conciliation and peacemaking

We look forward to receiving articles of no more than 20 A4 pages (not 
including bibliography) and a short bio of about 150 words by May 15, 
2014 at the following address:(submissions /at/ diffractions.net).

DIFFRACTIONS accepts submissions in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

DIFFRACTIONS also accepts book reviews that may not be related to the 
issue’s topic. If you wish to write a book review, please contact us at 
(reviews /at/ diffractions.net).

Please submit your contributions according to the journal's guidelines.

Find us online at www.diffractions.net and 
www.facebook.com/diffractionsjournal.

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