Imagining a hunger strike: Guantanamo 2013

Abstract

Existing literature has explored the vicarious witnessing of trauma in which images, narratives and artefacts facilitate a reconstruction of a past event by those who believe that access to these gives them an intimacy with the event and an imagining of the experiences of another (Zeitlin 1998, Nelson, 1998, Keats 2005). This paper adapts the concept of vicarious witnessing to explore how media re-imagine contemporaneous events to which journalists do not have direct access but the application of particular techniques to the limited materials available can still offer powerful reconstructions that invite news consumers to vicariously witness trauma. The paper looks at the force-feeding of the 2013 Guantanamo hunger strikers who were protesting at the perceived desecration of the Koran and at their continued incarceration. Guantanamo has a history as a site of trauma and the inflicting of trauma that pre-dates 9/11. Its remoteness has contributed to the sense of Guantanamo as an out-of-sight-out-of-mind space beyond the usual judicial constraints and rigorous media scrutiny (see Campisi 2008) and for these reasons it was chosen to house captives in the War on Terror. Journalists do have access to the base but not to the prisoners, their movements are highly constrained and the content they take out of the base is vetted. Notwithstanding these limitations, journalists were able to piece together bits of information into a coherent narrative and to visualize the trauma of the prisoners in a way that resonated powerfully, challenged the accounts provided by the Guantanamo officials and drew attention to the suffering of those force-fed.