Inverting cultures; the pictorial ceremonial of a suicide bomber and the ”unhomeliness” off the photographic picture

Sara Lenninger

Research output: Contribution to conferenceAbstractpeer-review

Abstract

On the 14th of January in 2004, Reem Raiyshi killed herself and four Israeli soldiers in a terrorist attack at the border between Israel and Gaza. Soon after the deed pictures on Reem, and her young son, were sent to media agencies in Europe - and to circulate on the Internet.
Although the picture of Reem is her picture it is not unique, but forms part of a subculture: the ceremonial of the suicide bombers seemed at that time to require the pictorial rendering of the perpetrator/victim in his or her declaration of the action before completing the act. Published on Internet, and circulating in mass media, the picture addresses not only the Ego culture of the perpetrator /victim, but also that of the attacked culture.
To come into speaking terms with the external culture - or to alter between being "alien" or to be "one of ones own” – one must submit to a meaning already known by the other culture (Lotman 2009). To insert “alien” elements, integrated with the meaning taken for granted, can be understood as a strategy in pictorial rhetoric in order to evade norm grounded predictability and invert cultural hierarchies.
This case study adds to the complication of when the same picture confirming both to the status of Ego culture and as the “threat” of an intruding other-culture in the dynamics of regulating the perception of “us and them”.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2017 Jul
Event13th IASS-AIS conference: Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans - International Semiotics Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania
Duration: 2017 Jun 262017 Jun 30
Conference number: 13
http://isisemiotics.eu/iass2017/

Conference

Conference13th IASS-AIS conference
Country/TerritoryLithuania
CityKaunas
Period2017/06/262017/06/30
Internet address

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Other Humanities not elsewhere specified

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Inverting cultures; the pictorial ceremonial of a suicide bomber and the ”unhomeliness” off the photographic picture'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this