Objects, images and texts: Archaeology and violence

Today, monuments and archaeological sites are often specific targets for violence. But rather than casting this as either collateral damage or the result of ignorance and incivility, it can be argued that the material world, in all its widely varied forms, is enmeshed in conflict and violence. This can be better understood in terms of the haptic significance of objects caught up in extreme and traumatic circumstances. The point of departure for this paper is W.J.T. Mitchell’s concept of the “traumatic gap” that emerges as “the unrepresentable space between words and images”. I show that where the normative breaks down, the haptic qualities of media can assume far greater significance. Books and pictures become objects as well as semiotic registers and graphic representations. Understanding this – the “X” that Mitchell uses to designate the emptiness between the normal meanings of words and images – requires and enables an archaeology of violence. Taking a cue from Mitchell’s formulation, I show how the particular qualities of this space can be expressed in a new algorithm, “image ←→ object ←→ text”. This space – Mitchell’s “presence of an absence” – can only be filled by things that are neither images nor texts in their conventional sense. This is demonstrated by the extreme of the torture cell, where the most mundane of everyday objects become both normalized in the careful, systematic records of the military operative, and terrifying in the experience of the prisoner. Here, the figure of the Hooded Man, leaked from the clandestine archive of Abu Ghraib, serves as an emblem for the horror of contemporary violence; both executioner and victim, torturer and prisoner, both the Christ-like posture of the saviour and the horror of beheading.