There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute
Never before have we been so aware of suffering. Atrocity and the infliction of pain—of relentless military conflict, humanitarian crises, the steady rise in nationalistic aggression, persistent racial oppression, environmental catastrophe—have become more ubiquitous through social media networks. O...
Saved in:
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
Language: | English English |
Published: |
2019
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/1/Acceptance_Letter%20%20ERCICSSH1910058.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/7/84931%20There%20are%20no%20words.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/ |
Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Institution: | Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia |
Language: | English English |
id |
my.iium.irep.84931 |
---|---|
record_format |
dspace |
spelling |
my.iium.irep.849312020-11-24T00:20:20Z http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/ There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute Mattar, Netty PR English literature Never before have we been so aware of suffering. Atrocity and the infliction of pain—of relentless military conflict, humanitarian crises, the steady rise in nationalistic aggression, persistent racial oppression, environmental catastrophe—have become more ubiquitous through social media networks. Our brutal encounters with pain constitute a new reality, one marked by a sense of ethical catastrophe that disturbs the boundaries of the subject. The trauma of bearing witness to and failing to prevent an act that violates deeply held beliefs about right and wrong constitutes what some have called ‘moral injury.’ This disconnect from our understanding of who we are is an experience common in (and perhaps fundamental to) war. Yet it is an ‘invisible’ wound that forces us to reconsider the very notion of trauma and of how it can be represented. This paper investigates how science fiction (sf) can portray the profound and unseen trauma of moral injury. Predicated on an ‘absent paradigm,’ sf is able to evoke complex variations of invisible injury through the construction of imaginary signs only understood in relation to the opponents they imply, which are ‘absent.’ I will examine Duncan Jones’ 2018 film, Mute, as an example of how muteness is an embodied translation of trauma that cannot be spoken and the inexpressibility of pain. I will further suggest that in this technologically-enhanced future Berlin, muteness and the refusal to be ‘fixed’ signifies a resistance to the hegemonic absenting of moral pain. In this way, the film relocates moral injury onto a complex network of power relations, signaled through the pervasive references to ongoing US military aggression, its past incursions and their aftereffects. Focusing on the characters’ struggle to maintain tenuous moral bearings in an apathetic world, Mute effectively weaves together moral injury, disability, techno-science and military violence, drawing our attention to the terrible damages we do to each other. 2019-06 Conference or Workshop Item NonPeerReviewed application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/1/Acceptance_Letter%20%20ERCICSSH1910058.pdf application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/7/84931%20There%20are%20no%20words.pdf Mattar, Netty (2019) There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute. In: 3rd Singapore – International Conference on Social Science & Humanities (ICSSH), 26th-27th June 2019, Singapore. (Unpublished) |
institution |
Universiti Islam Antarabangsa Malaysia |
building |
IIUM Library |
collection |
Institutional Repository |
continent |
Asia |
country |
Malaysia |
content_provider |
International Islamic University Malaysia |
content_source |
IIUM Repository (IREP) |
url_provider |
http://irep.iium.edu.my/ |
language |
English English |
topic |
PR English literature |
spellingShingle |
PR English literature Mattar, Netty There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
description |
Never before have we been so aware of suffering. Atrocity and the infliction of pain—of relentless military conflict, humanitarian crises, the steady rise in nationalistic aggression, persistent racial oppression, environmental catastrophe—have become more ubiquitous through social media networks. Our brutal encounters with pain constitute a new reality, one marked by a sense of ethical catastrophe that disturbs the boundaries of the subject. The trauma of bearing witness to and failing to prevent an act that violates deeply held beliefs about right and wrong constitutes what some have called ‘moral injury.’ This disconnect from our understanding of who we are is an experience common in (and perhaps fundamental to) war. Yet it is an ‘invisible’ wound that forces us to reconsider the very notion of trauma and of how it can be represented. This paper investigates how science fiction (sf) can portray the profound and unseen trauma of moral injury. Predicated on an ‘absent paradigm,’ sf is able to evoke complex variations of invisible injury through the construction of imaginary signs only understood in relation to the opponents they imply, which are ‘absent.’ I will examine Duncan Jones’ 2018 film, Mute, as an example of how muteness is an embodied translation of trauma that cannot be spoken and the inexpressibility of pain. I will further suggest that in this technologically-enhanced future Berlin, muteness and the refusal to be ‘fixed’ signifies a resistance to the hegemonic absenting of moral pain. In this way, the film relocates moral injury onto a complex network of power relations, signaled through the pervasive references to ongoing US military aggression, its past incursions and their aftereffects. Focusing on the characters’ struggle to maintain tenuous moral bearings in an apathetic world, Mute effectively weaves together moral injury, disability, techno-science and military violence, drawing our attention to the terrible damages we do to each other. |
format |
Conference or Workshop Item |
author |
Mattar, Netty |
author_facet |
Mattar, Netty |
author_sort |
Mattar, Netty |
title |
There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
title_short |
There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
title_full |
There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
title_fullStr |
There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
title_full_unstemmed |
There are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in Duncan Jones Mute |
title_sort |
there are no words: moral injury, disability and violence in duncan jones mute |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/1/Acceptance_Letter%20%20ERCICSSH1910058.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/7/84931%20There%20are%20no%20words.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/84931/ |
_version_ |
1684653110548496384 |