The Fallen, the Code, and the Jewish State |
How the simulation of victimhood becomes power through the image
By the time the dead appear before us, they have already been delivered from death into circulation, detached from the smallness of the person who has vanished and reissued as sign, proof, accusation, and permission. War does not just kill; it produces the visible dead, the dead who can be transmitted, captioned, enlarged, invoked. The body disappears as an image. What remains is more useful than the body, because the image can travel where the body cannot.
The obscene beauty of war begins when the corpse ceases to be singular and becomes clear only as a public sign. It is wrapped in a flag, placed beneath a chant, carried through the national gaze, and converted into a form of purity. The dead are innocent because they cannot answer back. They do not revise the slogans placed above them, nor do they interrupt the revenge prepared in their name. Their silence becomes the most eloquent speech available to........