10.54103/2036-461X/19081
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2036-461X
19081
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted Wounds. Media and the Mediation of Trauma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 192
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https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Reviews / Comptes rendus
2023-01-24
2022-11-22
2023-01-24
2023-01-24
157-158
Cinéma & Cie
Giulia Scomazzon
2022
10.54103/2036-461X/19081
157
Università IULM, Milano
2036-461X
39
en
158
Amit Pinchevski, Transmitted Wounds. Media and the Mediation of Trauma, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 192
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/19081/17548
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                                                                                       Amit Pinchevski
                                                                                       Transmitted Wounds. Media and the
                                                                                       Mediation of Trauma
                                                                                       Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021, pp. 192
                                                                                       DOI 10.54103/2036-461X/19081




                                                                                         ‘Media constitute the material conditions for       Shoshana Felman.
                                                                                       trauma to appear as something that cannot be fully      The first chapter examines the radio broadcast
                                                                                       approached and yet somehow must be’ (p. 3): this      of the Eichmann trial in Israel. The media event
                                                                                       idea summarizes the double — epistemological          was, for many Israelis, the first sympathetic
                                                                                       and ethical — stakes of Pinchevski’s research.        encounter with the trauma of the Holocaust that
                                                                                       For the author, the eminently technological           the Zionist identity politics of the 1950s had tried
                                                                                       operations of recording, transmitting and             to remove, turning survivors into marginalized
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                                                                                       processing are constitutive parts of what he          and speechless bodies. The radio, Pinchevsky
                                                                                       calls the ‘mediation of failed mediation’, that is,   points out, has the power to separate the body
                                                                                       the rendering of a traumatic memory that was          from the voice and to reconstruct a disembodied
                                                                                       originally marked by resistance to narration — a      voice that is omnipresent and otherworldly,
                                                                                       resistance, in other words, that media witnessing     akin, in some respects, to symptoms linked with
                                                                                       challenges and, at the same time, incorporates.       schizophrenic and paranoid psychopathology.
                                                                                       The book’s introduction retraces the ‘traumatic’      This case study reveals that the national radio
                                                                                       thread that runs through media theory, indicating     broadcast of the Eichmann trial made survivors’
                                                                                       a path that starts with Walter Benjamin, passes       claims of truth legitimate for the first time,
                                                                                       through Marshall McLuhan and ends with                placing them in the gap between narratology and
                                                                                       Friedrich Kittler. While the first two examine the    traumatography.
                                                                                       way in which media technologies participate in          The second chapter analyzes the relationship
                                                                                       the formation of a sensory apparatus capable of       between videography and testimony, focusing
                                                                                       reconfiguring the experience of modernity, Kittler    on the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust
                                                                                       interprets the contemporary digital technological     Testimonies at Yale University. The production
                                                                                       dimension as an ontological redesigning of            of an archive of the traumatic memory of
                                                                                       reality in a post-human perspective. Pinchevski       the survivors, supervised by the psychiatrist
                                                                                       derives his epistemology of media technologies        and psychoanalyst Dori Laub, ‘combines
                                                                                       from Kittler’s work and develops his ethical          oral history, the psychoanalytic session, and
                                                                                       and political view in a continuous reference to       the television interview’ (p. 45). Videotape
                                                                                       the philosophical thought of Emmanuel Levinas         technology is characterized by a predisposition
                                                                                       and the interdisciplinary work of Dori Laub and       to accessibility and distribution of content in


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 22 no. 39 2022 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                 157
different contexts such as museums, classrooms        of the database. At stake in this case study is
and TV broadcasting, which, in the will of the        the specific temporality fielded by digital media
promoters of the project, means an increased          that produces the impression of a contemporary
educational capacity. In addition, ‘the videotape     exchange between the witness and the public. For
performs the Real that it inadvertently captures’     Pinchevski what is lost in the new temporality,
(p. 54), preserving the performative aspects of       based on discrete and semantically pre-
testimony, such as the tone and cadence of the        classified narrative units, is the precariousness
voice, gestures and nonverbal cues. Making the        of the testimonial narrative. Emphasizing the
non-verbal visible, videotape leads the audience      side of the audience through a user-centered
towards an understanding of trauma which              design, virtual testimony assumes the absence
cannot be reduced to the historical account.          and the separation from witnesses as resolvable
   The third chapter deals with traumatic             predicaments, erasing the incommensurability
exposure to the media, also known as vicarious        of past and present. The reification of deep
traumatization. The existing PTSD clinical criteria   memory generated by algorithmic logic erases
(see DSM-V 2013) recognizes the potentially           the performative aspects of traumatic memory,
traumatogenic nature of visual media, however         raising ethical problems. In conclusion, virtual
restricting it to work-related activities. The        therapy — and in particular the clinical therapy
development of contemporary clinical history          called VRET (Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy)
concerning trauma is studied through three            developed within the Institute for Creative
events: the research project called ‘the trauma       Technology of University of South California in
film paradigm’ in the early 1960s, the September      collaboration with X-box platform for treating
11 attacks, and the increase in diagnosis of PTSD     war-related PTSD — is the latest and most
among drone pilots involved in Afghanistan and        controversial case study examined by the author.
Iraq wars. These three case studies involve three     VR therapy exposes patients to virtual scenarios
different media — film, television and digital —      that recreate the traumatic event in a computer-
that are united by co-extensiveness between           generated and safe environment in order to
technical and mental. The most emblematic             achieve habituation to anxiety triggers. VRET can
case of this direct relationship is that of drone     be used to both heal and train soldiers, blurring
operators who suffer a trauma due to a violence       the lines between warfare and entertainment.
inflicted by them to strangers at a distance. It is     Transmitted Wounds is an archeology of
a post-traumatic disorder caused by being an          the mediation of trauma from analog to digital
active participant in the production of a trauma      that exposes the moral stance implied in
that poses a moral problem. Can the aggressor         media witnessing. Preserving and transmitting
and the attacked be understood under the              traumatic memories seems more difficult in
same category of mental suffering? Pinchevski         the cultural logic of big data that invites users
highlights here the shift from pity through media     to assert their own presence at the expense of
— at the core of Sontag and Boltanski’s studies —     the vulnerability of the subject who experienced
to trauma by media.                                   the violence. Nevertheless, the choice between
   The last two chapters analyse virtual witnessing   the democratization of trauma through the
and virtual therapy in the digital age. The book      feeling of pity and its neutralization remains an
focuses on the New Dimensions in Testimony            unavoidable necessity.
project which combines human-computer speech                                       Giulia Scomazzon
interaction capabilities with three-dimensional                            [Università IULM, Milano]
holographic imaging. The aim of the project is to
create an immersive experience using the logic



158                                                                                Transmitted Wounds
