Witness: Re-Presenting Trauma in and by Cinema

The Communication Review, 13:171–192, 2010 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4421 print/1547-7487 online DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2010.505145

I Witness: Re-presenting Trauma in and by Cinema
TAMAR ASHURI
Department of Communication Studies, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel and School of Communication, Sapir College, D.N. Hof Ashkelon, Israel

This article considers how film helps reconcile a traumatic collective past through representation of a personal trauma. It focuses on the role of witnesses in conveying their experiences regarding events that have traumatized them. The author suggests that a witness to a traumatic event performs the excess of an event that has transformed him or her. By framing the witness as a performer rather than a mere conduit for transferring knowledge to the uninformed, the article underscores the communicative dimension of witnessing by studying this process as an ongoing interplay between addressers and addressees who undergo mutual transformations in and by this action. These arguments are presented through an examination of the film Waltz With Bashir (2008), in which its director documented his struggle to come to terms with his personal trauma surrounding the part he played in the Lebanon War. The author suggests that by performing this loss of experience, the director turns the audience into witnesses, thus transforming a personal loss of experience into a collective experience of loss.

Trauma and the effects of catastrophes and victimization on the formation of self and collective identity are one of the key issues in recent academic research (e.g., Agamben 1999; Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, & Sztompka, 2004; Caruth, 1996; Felman & Laub, 1992). Overall, the vast literature on trauma strongly suggests that an individual’s failure to work through his or her traumatic past often induces symptoms of psychological distress. Studies have also revealed how the self relies on a sense of

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