Gérer la distance : réflexivité et éthique des corps meurtris dans les documentaires syriens d’après 2011

Abstract

Taking into account the post-2011 Syrian documentary, we realize that the question of the representation of “bruised bodies” occupies a major place which goes beyond crimes’ documentation committed during the conflict. In fact, in a large number of them there is a respect, an ethics towards “bruised bodies”. The question of their representation raised deep debates concerning both the fact of showing bodies and how to do it. By focusing more on how to represent bodies, we will be interested in the reflexive and ethical dimension that these representations involve. In this perspective, it will therefore be a question of showing how the directors articulate these different dimensions by analyzing several sequences of documentaries. Thinking of the distance - the one that the directors impose on themselves and the one that imposes on them -, we will deal with the way in which the filmic gesture integrates the ethical dimension in the representation of bruised bodies. Then, we will show how the bodies absent from the screen nevertheless occupy a central place in these films, through, in particular, the representation of places like the cemetery, heterotopic space that we find in Foucault.