In This Issue/Name Tag

Abstract

As I write, media pundits are debating the relative power of two iconic images—a civilian father and young son seen crouching behind a wall as the son is shot and killed, and a soldier thrown from a window and stomped to death by a crowd. Each is horrific, tragic, and brutal. Each was repeatedly shown hundreds if not thousands of times in media throughout the world. In October of the year 2000 the dead Palestinian child and the dead Israeli soldier each carry the weight of signification of a seemingly intractable ethnic conflict. In neither case could a viewer know the identity of the victim just from the visual evidence. Their identities were open until fixed by externally added information which created a binary coding that pushed toward a choosing of sides. But with whom is one's allegiance? Which one is “ours” and which “theirs”? In this time of the transnational pancapitalism and “global” identity discussed by Catherine Bernard in “Bodies and Digital Utopia,” how are we even to understand the question?