Screening Violence:A Transnational Study of Post-Conflict Imaginaries

“暴力甄别”是一种创新的接触方式，针对的是那些经历了长期和根深蒂固的各种暴力的社区，从游击战到国家支持的对特定群体的迫害，从大规模屠杀到宗派冲突。在我们研究的五个国家中，每一个国家都因已经发生的暴力事件而严重分裂，在每一个国家中，承认过去、承认不公正和痛苦的斗争都导致了对罪责、责任和受害者身份的争议。我们正在研究的这种暴力的影响是实质性的，并在受影响的政策中产生了持久的变化。但是，我们认为，除了需要研究暴力的物质和结构形式以及原因之外，还必须了解暴力在个人的头脑和社区的集体意识中产生和再现的想象。经历暴力和分享暴力的方式在很大程度上取决于为赋予暴力意义而构建的故事，以及有助于形成社区身份的故事。我们认识到最近一系列强调了解当地动态和更广泛社会冲突经验的研究的重要性。越来越多的暴力调解的学术专家和实践者都认为，任何不解决当地冲突经验的所谓“扁平和平”的企图都可能无法实现其目标。我们认为，当地的社会想象是与社区接触的关键点，这些社区试图理解暴力的经历，并引导和解和从冲突过渡的复杂性。因此，我们的研究强调了理性和流行的暴力描述相互加强和整合的本质。人类经验的这两个领域都需要同等的关注和尊重。我们的研究对不发达的对当地暴力想象的理解做出了重要贡献。我们认为，视觉文化是冲突和暴力产生意义的关键场所。我们计划通过电影和纪录片的媒介与经历过暴力的社区接触。认识到要求社区反思他们自己的冲突是困难的，也许只是强化了当地的想象，我们将通过观看关于他人冲突的电影，在五个主要研究地点中的每一个参与不同的社区。我们认为，要求社区反思其他政治的暴力行为，为个人和社区理解自己的冲突经历和可能的过渡方式提供了批判性反思的空间。我们的试点研究清楚地表明，在经历暴力的社区内产生的熟悉的暴力描述受到了外部团体和个人的不同解读的挑战。我们的目标是研究冲突和暴力的想象产生和再现的方式，以及想象通过与其他社区的想象接触而受到质疑或破坏的方式。我们有兴趣了解当地的想象是如何产生暴力叙事的，但也有兴趣了解曾经挑战或破坏暴力叙事的方式，可能会为审讯自己的冲突开辟新的空间。我们试图了解，一旦对冲突的局部想象被反思他人对冲突的想象所提供的对冲突的更广泛认识所扰乱，它们的连贯性是否会加强地方一级过渡与和解的前景。

Screening Violence is an innovative engagement with communities that have experienced prolonged and entrenched violence of different kinds from guerrilla warfare, to state sponsored persecution of particular groups, to mass murder, to sectarian conflict. Each of the five countries we are researching is or has been deeply divided by the violence that has occurred and in each case the struggle to acknowledge the past and recognise injustice and suffering has led to contested accounts of guilt, responsibility and victimhood. Violence of the kind we are researching is material in its effects and has created lasting change in the polities affected. But we believe that in addition to the need for research on material and structural forms and causes of violence it is also essential to understand the imaginaries in which violence is produced and reproduced in the minds of individuals and the collective consciousness of communities. The ways that violence is experienced and the experience of it shared depends to a significant extent on the stories that are constructed to give it meaning and that contribute to the making of identity in communities. We recognise the importance of a range of recent research that emphasises understanding the local dynamics and experiences of wider social conflict. Increasingly, both academic experts in and practitioners of violence mediation argue that any attempt to impose the so-called 'flat pack peace' that does not address local experience of conflict is likely to fail in its objectives. We argue that the local, social imaginary is a key point of engagement with communities attempting to understand the experience of violence and navigating the complexities of reconciliation and transition from conflict. Accordingly, our research highlights the mutually reinforcing and integrated nature of rational and popular accounts of violence. Both realms of the human experience require equal attention and respect. Our research makes an important contribution to the underdeveloped appreciation of local imaginaries of violence. We argue that visual culture is a key site where meaning is made about conflict and violence. We plan to engage with communities that have experienced violence through the medium of cinema and documentary film. Recognising that asking communities to reflect on their own conflicts is difficult and perhaps simply reinforces local imaginaries, we will engage different communities in each of the five primary research sites through viewings of films about the conflicts of others. We argue that asking communities to reflect on the violence of other polities creates a space for critical reflection on the ways that individuals and communities understand their own experiences of conflict and possible transitions from it. Our pilot research clearly indicated that familiar accounts of violence produced within communities experiencing it were challenged with alternative readings by groups and individuals external to it. We aim to research the ways that imaginaries of conflict and violence are produced and reproduced but also the ways the imaginary can be contested or disrupted through an engagement with the imaginaries of other communities. We are interested to learn how local imaginaries produce narratives of violence but also the ways that once challenged or disrupted they may open up new spaces for interrogating one's own conflict. We seek to understand if local imaginaries of conflict may enhance the prospects for transition and reconciliation at local levels once their coherence is disturbed by a wider appreciation of conflict provided by the opportunity of reflecting on the conflict imaginaries of others.