Waltzing with Bashir Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema

by Morag, Raya

• ISBN13: 9781780762647
• ISBN10: 178076264X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-11-26
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

Waltzing with Bashir proposes a new paradigm for cinema trauma studies – the trauma of the perpetrator. Recognizing a current shift in interest from the trauma suffered by victims to that suffered by perpetrators, the book seeks to theorize this yet under-theorized field. Taking as a point of departure the distinction between testimony given by the victim and confession made by the perpetrator, this pioneering work ventures to define and analyze perpetrator trauma in scholarly, representational, literary, and societal contexts.

Driven by the emergence of a new wave of Israeli documentary cinema, the book analyzes Israeli post- second-Intifada films and literature. As Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir and other new wave films demonstrate, Israeli cinema, attached on one side to the legacy of the Holocaust and on the other to the Israeli Occupation, is a highly relevant case for probing the limits of both victim and perpetrator traumas.

Author Biography

Raya Morag is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Table of Contents

Introduction: From Victim to Perpetrator Trauma
PART I: VICTIM TRAUMA
1. The Body as the Battlefield
2. Chronic Victim Trauma and Terror
3. Queerness, Ethnicity and Terror
PART II: PERPETRATOR TRAUMA
4. The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Male Perpetrator
5. The New Wave of Documentary Cinema: The Female Perpetrator
6. The New Wave of Documentary Literature
Conclusion