Narratives of Middle East Massacres: Reading Artistic Material as Sources

This paper will explore how artistic materials such as artwork, films, theater, and others can be read as vital sources of narratives of and engagement with events of mass violent death. In cases of mass violent death such as massacres, there can be a dearth and/or contradiction of documentation and evidence, largely due to often-present competing socio-political objectives and operationalization of such violent events. This is notably true for massacres that occur under authoritarian systems, during ongoing armed conflict, or without the presence of willing witnesses to recount testimonies, conditions that notably apply to massacres committed in the 1980s in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Therefore, this paper will analyze representations of selected massacres from these contexts across various artistic materials. This paper is based on the argument that the significance of massacres as events of mass violent death is often due to the convergence of historical and contemporary narratives that are embedded into these events, and that human rights, justice, and accountability efforts need to be more attuned to these narratives and the roles the massacres play within them. This means that reading socio-cultural material from artistic fields can complement and capture dynamics around memory, narratives, and significations of such events that are not otherwise captured or elucidated by other “official” sources such as human rights reports or investigations, media coverage, and government statements. Artists and the work they produce that address these events, as well as the spaces and the audiences for this work, should all be considered for analysis of how actors, realms, and dialogues exist around events of mass violent death. This paper will use elements of cultural studies, human rights studies, and collective memory studies as a multidisciplinary theoretical framework.