Looking at the Iraq War with âEyes Wide Openâ: Trauma, Memory and Ethics

Catherine Ann Collins

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Looking at the Iraq War with âEyes Wide Openâ: Trauma, Memory and Ethics

In: Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

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Catherine Ann Collins

Catherine Ann Collins
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 33â41

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848880856_005

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This chapter employs a case study of âEyes Wide Openâ - US community memorial developed by the American Friends Service Organization. The traveling exhibition promotes a discourse of trauma - discursive space and language - that evokes a collective response to personal and cultural costs of the Iraq War. âEyes Wide Openâ engages the viewer in memory work by highlighting the traumatized body that is represented both metonymically and narratively: US military and Iraqi civilian deaths are represented by hundreds of military boots and well-worn shoes corresponding to the age of the civilian victim, while at the same time large posters featuring a photograph and biography of civilians killed in the war and videotaped messages from military families personalize the trauma of this war. The resulting painful memories evoked may, in LaCapraâs terms, become necessary to avoid covering the wounds that traumatized individuals and nations often employ in political discussions about war. But an exploration of how the memorial appropriates the trauma of those fighting and living in war-torn Iraq, albeit for a good cause - the cessation of a war - raises the broader question about the relationship between trauma discourse and ethics. The exhibition also challenges old associations and justificatory memories. Visual arguments connect American involvement in Iraq with civilian and military trauma, and verbal arguments presented in the memorial dissociate justificatory actions from 9/11. âEyes Wide Openâ offers a significant stepping off point for a discussion of trauma, memory and cultural discourse about the war in Iraq.

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Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848880856

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 15 Apr 2011

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Looking at the Iraq War with âEyes Wide Openâ: Trauma, Memory and Ethics

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Traumatic Imprints: Performance, Art, Literature and Theoretical Practice

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Looking at the Iraq War with âEyes Wide Openâ: Trauma, Memory and Ethics