Uncle, Look at This!
Domestic Ethnographies and the Iraq War
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Pablo Alvarez Murillo in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article considers the epistemic value of Iraqi first-person documentaries of family life, or domestic ethnographies, during the Iraq War (2003–2011). The article analyses Life After the Fall (Abid 2008) and Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Fahdel 2015), two documentaries about the everyday life of the videomakers’ family members in the advent of the US-led 2003 invasion and shortly after the occupation. The article examines how Iraqi domestic ethnographies dispute and complement dominant (Western) media, filmic and historical discourses of the conflict. I argue that these videos provide a nuanced understanding of the complex social, cultural and historical dynamics of this period, exceeding essentialisms and hegemonic discourses of violence, terror and victimhood. In addition, I demonstrate how this approach facilitates the participation of historically marginalized voices of young female family members, particularly in the representation of the conflict, and situates otherwise unusual discussions around Iraqi women’s rights and gender issues at the core of everyday life in post-invasion Iraq.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Abdulameer, Ali (2022). Documentary Filmmaking in Iraq. In Shafik, Viola (ed.), Documentary Filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa, pp. 47–62. New York: American University in Cairo Press.
-
Abdullah, Thabit A.J. (2011). A Short History of Iraq. New York: Routledge.
-
Ali, Zahra (2018). Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-
Al-Ali, Nadje (2007). Iraqi Women: Untold Stories From 1948 to the Present. London: Zed Books.
-
Al-Ali, Nadje and Deborah Al-Najjar (2013). Introduction: Writing Trauma, Memory and Materiality. In Al-Ali, Nadje and Deborah Al-Najjar (eds.), We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War, pp. xxv–xl. New York: Syracuse University Press.
-
Al-Ali, Nadje and Nicola Pratt (2009). What Kind of Liberation?: Women and The Occupation of Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press.
-
Al-Azmeh, Aziz (2009). Islam and Modernities. London: Verso books.
-
Al-Mohammad, Hayder (2015). Poverty Beyond Disaster in Postinvasion Iraq: Ethics and the “Rough Ground” of the Everyday. Current Anthropology, 56(11): S108–S115.
-
Al-Kaisy, Aida (2017). Normalization of War and Conflict in Iraq’s Iraqiya Television. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 10, 234–254.
-
Aufderheide, Patricia (2007). Your Country, My Country: How Films about the Iraq War Construct Publics. Framework, 48, 56–65.
-
Brewer. John (2010). Microhistory and the Histories of Everyday Life. Centre for Advanced Studies, E Series, 5, 1–16.
-
Busse, Jan (2022). Everyday life in the face of conflict: sumud as a spatial quotidian practice in Palestine. Journal of International Relations and Development 25, 583–607. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00255-1
-
Ginsberg, Terri (2016) Special issue on film and video. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 10, pp. 203–206.
-
Ginsberg, Terri (2009). International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies—special issue on Media and Film. International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, 3(1): pp. 3–5.
-
Ginsberg, Terri and Chris Lippard (2020). Cinema of the Arab World: Contemporary Directions in Theory and Practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Ismael, TareqY. and Jackeline S. Ismael (2015). Iraq in the Twenty-First Century: Regime Change and the Making of a Failed State. London and New York: Routledge.
-
Johnson, Penny and Suad Joseph (2009). War and Transnational Arab Families. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 5(3): 1–10.
-
Levi, Giovanni (2001). On Microhistory. In Burke, P. (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, pp. 97–119. Cambridge: Polity Press and Blackwell Publishers.
-
Butler, Judith (2016). Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?. New York: Verso.
-
Chanan, Michael (2007). The Politics of Documentary. London: British Film Institute.
-
Chaudhuri, Shohini (2022). Iraq War Home Movies: Abbas Fahdel’s Slow Documentary Homeland (Iraq Year Zero). In Shafik, Viola (ed.), Documentary Filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa, pp. 457–473. New York: American University in Cairo Press.
-
Hermez, Sami (2017). War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
-
Kelly, Tobias (2008). The attractions of accountancy: living an ordinary life during the second Palestinian intifada. Ethnography, 9(3): 351–376. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138108094975
-
Lebow, Alisa (2015). The Unwar Film. In Juhasz, Alexandra and Alisa Lebow (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film, pp. 454–474. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
-
Masson, Nicolas (2012). War, Crimes and Videotapes: Conflicting Memories in Films on Iraq. In Tejel, Jordi, Peter Sluglett, Riccardo Bocco, Hamit Bozarslan (eds.), Writing the Modern History of Iraq: Historiographical and Political Challenges, pp. 445–458. London: World Scientific Publishing.
-
Mazaheri, Nimah (2010). Iraq and the Domestic Political Effects of Economic Sanctions. The Middle East Journal, 64(2): pp. 253–268. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3751/64.2.15
-
Nichols, Bill (2017). Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana Press.
-
Nichols, Bill (1991). Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
-
Ollman, Bertell (2008). Why Dialectics, Why Now?. In Ollman, Bertell and Tony Smith (eds.), Dialectics for the New Century, pp. 8–25. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
-
Pachachi, Maysoon (2013). A Film-Training Project for Young Iraqis. In Al-Ali, Nadje and Deborah Al-Najjar (eds.), We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War, pp. 205–215. New York: Syracuse University Press.
-
Renov, Michael (1999). Domestic Ethnography and the Construction of the “Other” Self. In Renov, Michael and Jane Gaines (eds.), Collecting Visible Evidence, pp. 140–155. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
-
Sorbera, Lucia (2012). History and Fiction in the New Iraqi Cinema. In Tejel, Jordi, Peter Sluglett, Riccardo Bocco, Hamit Bozarslan (eds.), Writing the Modern History of Iraq: Historiographical and Political Challenges, pp. 423–444. London: World Scientific Publishing.
-
Tamari, Salim (2013). Normalcy and Violence: The Yearning for the Ordinary in Discourse of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. Journal of Palestine Studies, 42(4): 48–60. DOI: 10.1525/jps.2013.42.4.48
-
Taraki, Lisa (2006). Introduction. In Taraki, Lisa (ed.), Living Palestine: Family Survival, Resistance, and Mobility under Occupation, pp. xi–xxx. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
-
Visser, Reidar (2012). The Sectarian Master Narrative in Iraqi Historiography: New Challenges Since 2003. In Tejel, Jordi; Peter Sluglett, Riccardo Bocco, Hamit Bozarslan (eds.), Writing the Modern History of Iraq: Historiographical and Political Challenges, pp. 47–59. London: World Scientific Publishing.
-
Watson, Ryan (2021). Radical Documentary and Global Crises. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
-
Abid, Kasim (2008). Life After the Fall, documentary.
-
Fahdel, Abbas (2015). Homeland: Iraq Year Zero, documentary.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 139 | 139 | 16 |
| Full Text Views | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 53 | 53 | 9 |
Uncle, Look at This!
Domestic Ethnographies and the Iraq War
In: Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationSearch for other papers by Pablo Alvarez Murillo in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article considers the epistemic value of Iraqi first-person documentaries of family life, or domestic ethnographies, during the Iraq War (2003–2011). The article analyses Life After the Fall (Abid 2008) and Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Fahdel 2015), two documentaries about the everyday life of the videomakers’ family members in the advent of the US-led 2003 invasion and shortly after the occupation. The article examines how Iraqi domestic ethnographies dispute and complement dominant (Western) media, filmic and historical discourses of the conflict. I argue that these videos provide a nuanced understanding of the complex social, cultural and historical dynamics of this period, exceeding essentialisms and hegemonic discourses of violence, terror and victimhood. In addition, I demonstrate how this approach facilitates the participation of historically marginalized voices of young female family members, particularly in the representation of the conflict, and situates otherwise unusual discussions around Iraqi women’s rights and gender issues at the core of everyday life in post-invasion Iraq.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 139 | 139 | 16 |
| Full Text Views | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 53 | 53 | 9 |