Abstract
Pierre Nora once said, “We speak so much of memory because there is so little of it left.” Does it mean that we need to document memory so not to lose the truth? What is the ‘T'ruth? And from which perspective? Based on the Lebanese case, could films be one of the mechanisms used to achieve transitional justice? The author of this chapter depends on both Pierre Nora's perception of sites and place of memory along with Maurice Halbwachs' theory on collective memory in order to understand whether documenting the traumatic events is considered as an applicable mechanism to achieve justice within countries that struggle to accomplish national reconciliation? The methodological approach relies on visual critical discourse analysis combining Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic approach and Norman Fairclough's perception of dialectic of discourse.
TopIntroduction
The corpus of this chapter consists of analyzing 4 documentaries (were released with the emergence of the Arab Spring revolutions) documenting the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975-1990. The analysis is about studying their context, different actors, mechanisms, and hidden interpretations revealed through the following documentaries: We Want To Know (Badna Naaref), by: Carol Mansour, 2012; A History Lesson (Darson fel tareekh), by: Hady Zaccak, 2009; Sleepless Nights (Layal Bla Noum), by: Eliane Raheb, 2012; Lanterns of Memory (Masabeh El-Zakera), by: Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri, 2009. Finally, the author is using these documentaries as a platform to view some of the recent Arab experiences of Transitional Justice, especially within the Arab Spring countries and how the current political context affects the concepts of justice and belonging. Based on this, the research inquires about the possibility of having documentaries and films as a grassroots-mechanism used by the people to achieve transitional justice within the Arab world in light of the failure of Arab states to play their role in revealing the truth regarding different human-rights-violation incidences.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Visual Narratives: Refers to the filmic production of documentaries through which narration of historical events was the core issue.
Transitional Justice: Transitional justice definition varies between different formal and informal mechanisms that ensure justice through the implementation of law. Some of these mechanisms are about initiating war crime trials, empowering the role of non-governmental organizations in constantly reminding the governments of their obligations to investigate crimes, punishing the perpetrators, and finally for creating the conditions for the implementation of victims’ and society's right to learn the truth about the past ( Kandic & Bleeker, 2000 ).
Forgiveness and Forgetting: It depicts the dialectic dilemma of remembering and forgetting. Whether to let go of the war memory in order to survive, or, to keep reminding the Lebanese of the atrocities conducted during the civil war so not to repeat the same mistakes again.
Object of Memory: Within this chapter, the main objects of memory is represented within the filmic memory as an entity in which certain historic past events are kept alive and can be traced through different documentaries where the director tends to raise the level of realism by presenting a fixed and still image from the war and layer in its surface figures, statistics, and numbers of dead, injured, and missing Lebanese during the civil war.
Visual Discourse: Consists of the empirical data and method of analysis used by the author to that was highlighted through the analysis of the visual discourse of the Lebanese Civil War represented in four documentaries. The analysis was about studying theses four documentaries in terms of: their context, different actors, mechanisms, and hidden interpretations revealed through the following documentaries: We Want To Know (Badna Naaref) , by: Carol Mansour, 2012; A History Lesson (Darson fel tareekh) , by: Hady Zaccak, 2009; Sleepless Nights (Layal Bla Noum) , by: Eliane Raheb, 2012; Lanterns of Memory (Masabeh El-Zakera) , by: Jean Chamoun and Mai Masri, 2009.
Collective Memory: The author depends on Halbwachs’ definition of collective memory as a plural but not unitary as it is created under conditions of two forces: the social context and the individual consciousness. The author uses also Pierre Nora's perception of a collective memory that constructs individual identities even based on scattered ‘collective’ memories through the serious labor of academics, film directories, civil society actors, etc.