Terrorism and visibility in Algeria’s ‘black decade’: Des hommes et des dieux (2010)

Abstract

This article addresses the audio-visual representation of the victims of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in Algeria in the 1990s, drawing on both historical and testimonial sources before examining Xavier Beauvois’s Des hommes et des dieux (2010). Based on a true story – the abduction and murder of a group of ex-colonial French monks– it offers a useful platform on which to interrogate the interactions of the representational and the political in relation to terrorism. Critical accounts of contemporary terrorism suggest that there has been a shift in focus from governments and terrorist organisations to an apprehension of the individual victim. However, examinations of the audio-visual can inform terrorism studies, pointing towards representational and socio-political occlusions by illuminating an implicit hierarchy of visibility. Certain lives, generally Western and Christian, are visible and mourned publicly when lost, while others, in this case Algerian, remain without an image.

News values and human values in mediated terrorism: Photographic representations of the 2015 Beirut and Paris attacks by global news agencies

“…Even in situations of reporting the event of mass casualties, studies suggest that the dichotomous discourse persists in the representations of the sufferers based on geographical, racial and cultural proximities (Chouliaraki, 2006(Chouliaraki, , 2008Flood, 2016;Rose, 2008). Moving beyond the simple ideological differentiation of the 'West-versus-Others', these scholars foreground their analysis on the moral dimension of ontological differentiation in the valuation of lives within the representations.…”

“…The former implies the potential of the symbolic power of global media in generating moral responsibility to act on distant others no matter their ‘distance’ (Barnett, 2003). On the other hand, the communitarian argument asserts that the aestheticized spectacle of suffering leads to generating moral agency of care for the distant others who are ‘like us’ (Chouliaraki, 2008; Flood, 2016). This notion of communitarian care arises due to managing the visibility of suffering by transnational institutions according to the established sense of belonging, where it detaches the emotional aspects for the ‘irrelevant’ sufferers while being empathetic to the sufferers who are ‘like us’ (Chouliaraki, 2008).…”

“…Similarly, Ismail and Mishra’s (2019) recent comparative study of The New York Times ’ coverage of the Beirut and Paris attacks in 2015 reveals how the Paris incident was covered in more detail over the Beirut incident, based on cultural proximity. In addition, Flood (2016) analyses audio-visual representations of a French television drama, Des hommes et des dieux , suggesting that French victims are more publicly mourned than Algerian victims.…”