Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths

I would like to briefly discuss the article entitled “Afghans Protest Civilian Deaths”, especially the portion on the use of dead bodies as a referent for the supposed atrocities of the US military.  The debate discussed in the article centers on a recent air raid, which claimed the lives of many innocent civilians.  Following the raid, the civilians have risen up in protest of the continued occupation of Afghanistan by United States troops.  In order to prove/strengthen their claims, protestors have brought many of the bodies directly to the governor’s office.

In class, we considered the differences between media reports and the experiences of those on the ground, in reality.  In Body of War, Zarkov considers how the media plays up actual events for a variety of reasons (be they political, economic, etc.). In this article however, the protestors appear to be directly using aspects of the actual event for their political purposes.  The bodies are mutilated because of events in reality; they are not exaggerations, they just are.  Yet, we cannot say that these protests are devoid of symbolic weight, as the image presented by the protestors allows their success.  By showing mutilated women and children, one is able to indexically reference the horrors that created the bodies.  Rather than presenting ashes, which appear as dirt without resemblance to the human form, the protestors have bloodied bodies at their disposal.

I do not wish to detract from the claims of the protestors.  Rather, I would like to point out that atrocities are often measured along dimensions other than the actual extent of the occurrence.  Even when the discursive object is located in the reality, its power is often dependent on its ability to grab the viewer.

Link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/world/asia/08afghan.html?pagewanted=1