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January 5, 2005
Thanks to modern media technology we are spectators of calamities taking place in the countriesaround the Indian Ocean. We find ourselves overwhelmed by the thousands of harrowing images of the disaster that have been produced by the hundreds of cameras, videos and satellites in the hands of professional, specialized journalists, European tourists and ordinary people (locals).
These images and sounds living room are a quintessential postmodern experience. It diffentiates our world in postmodernity from the world of the Lisbon or Krakatoa disasters.
We find that we hunger for a more direct and immediate on the ground contact. Ceneus.com---a Sri Lankan blog--is well worth reading.
Before the waves of destruction:
Waves of destruction
After:
At ChiensSansFrontiers in Sri Lanka they say:
"42 US Marines landed in Sri Lanka yesterday and not a soul said a word. As they got out of the plane that brought them to Colombo they posed for the cameras, and smiled. Looks like they'd done the one week(!) crash course on how to smile in a miss world show. They say 1500 are on their way.
We ask for doctors and they send us soldiers. How many people here think they're really here to help Sri Lanka? Can I see a show of hands? No one?"
Another side to the politics of aid.
Some images of the after effects of the waves of destruction:
Waves of destruction
This image evokes empathy for the plight of those who lost their loved ones. And:
Reuters, Indian survivors search for belongings in Nagapattinam.
Do we not make an ethical turn to compassion in relation to the suffering of others who have nothing?
This side of the politics of disaster, which is explored in The Hindu, shows the way our ethic of compassion is filtered.
Waves of Destruction
Our response to the waves of images of destruction that flood into living rooms is to search for ways to select the images so as to construct some sort of meaning in the form of a story (stringing concepts together) that is based on our shocked affects to the images.The story we construct is about our sorrow and compassion for the suffering of others. We then try to act on that compassion in the best way that we can.
We then criticise those who lack compassion for those who have suffered.
We can ask: do the images awaken or undermine compassion as an emotion and an ethic?
Waves of Destruction
We can also ask: do aesthetic philosophies connect image affect, concept and ethics. Or do they, like Deleuze, concentrate on effect and concept and sunder the ethics?
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