This book focuses on American political discourse connected to war, dissent, and empathy. Through interdisciplinary methods of history, politics and media studies, the book examines ways in which American self-identity alters as a consequence of media portrayal of human suffering and of its existential others. It compares representations of the Iraq wars to earlier precedents and looks at the work of American activists, assessing how narratives and images of human suffering in new media iconography generate empathic attitudes towards others.
This comparative, multimodal study helps to explain shifting self-identities within the U.S, and relationally through the representation of the Arab
other presenting an original and historicised contribution to the media-war field of academic and public debate. The book underscores empathy as a vibrant category of analysis that expands how we think about West-Arab relations, revealing how understanding the cultural aspects of this conflictual interrelationship needs to be broadened.
Author(s): Osman Latiff
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 176
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
What is This Book About?
Contents
About the Author
Part I Empathy and the Finding of Empathic Spaces
1 Empathy and the Search for the Other
Opening Spaces of Empathy
The Need to Self-Imagine
The Challenge of Empathy
Bridging Our Gaps
References
2 Landscaping ‘Otherness and Challenging Frames of “Nothingness” in Contemporary Palestine’
Symbolism of Space
The People and the Olive: The Story of the Run Across Palestine
Beginnings and Ends—Location and Symbolic Intent
Conclusion
References
3 Distance as Othering: US Images of Conflict Inside and Outside the Homeland
News Framing and Symbolic Codes
Virginia Tech and Visual Motifs of Grieving
Activating a Collectivism Frame for Others
Poetry of Pain and Pathos
Remembering Iraqis in American Photos
Seeing the Anonymous Figure
Challenging Dominant Media Frames: Considering Empathic Responses
Conclusion
References
Part II The War in Iraq and the Empathic Spaces of Elsewhere
4 The Mahmudiyah Killings and the Framing of Abeer
Obscuring Frames with Images of Chaos
Mahmudiyah and the Opening and Closing of Frames
The Framing Between a Past and Present
Empathy and the Creating of ‘Imagined’ Frames
Conclusion
References
5 Empathy Behind and Beyond the Cage
Frantz Fanon and the Mental Effects of Torture
Symbolic Codes and Spaces in Camp X-Ray
From the Cage to Camp X-Ray
Conclusion
References
6 Performance and Pathos: Symbolism of Suffering in the Mourning of Iraqi ‘Mothers’
Images of Subordinated Others
Conclusion
Bibliography
Conclusion
Looking Ahead
References
