Rethinking Images of Violence: Abounaddara and the Right to Dignity

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Barber, Samuel
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

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Abounaddara is a Syrian film collective working to circumvent dominant power structures that control representations of Syrians. The manifestos of the collective call for a rethinking of contemporary attitudes surrounding images of violence and furthermore demand a universal right to dignified representation. In this thesis, I explore the main philosophies in the collective’s papers and analyze how they interact with an ongoing academic discussion about images of violence, representation, and spectatorship. I then study the Abounaddara’s films as a vehicle of expression for the group’s philosophies. Selecting nine of the group’s works, I identify recurring themes, motifs, and formats within them while considering how these strategies reflect the goals of the collective. In particular, I discuss the manifestations of rituals, the everyday, and war as a peripheral or single part of the Syrian experience. Abounaddara provides an alternate conception of this experience that escapes the constant focus on images that represent solely through the lens of violence and victimization. This thesis aims to underline the collective’s active engagement in the struggle for dignified representation while encouraging a critical reconceptualization of images of suffering and violence within the modern world.

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