Abstract
Journalism plays an outsized role in shaping the meanings of faraway violence. While journalism promises to categorize, define, and explain war in the Middle East and elsewhere, journalists in warzones attest to what their texts are designed to elide: a violence that challenges journalism’s discursive control. Through comparisons with magic as a parallel explanatory enterprise, this chapter argues that proximity and correspondence operate as both magical and journalistic techniques of worlding, through which a dangerous Other can be signified and contained. Yet despite this worlding activity, what is unsignifiable, unexplainable—unworldable—continues to threaten. If the power of journalism is to deliver a knowable world, the turn to magic reveals the boundaries of this enterprise in conditions of violence. Building on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with journalists in Iraq and the surrounding region, the chapter tracks the logic and limits of journalism as a world-making practice confronting the world-unmaking of war. Journalism, the chapter suggests, “names the witch” (Siegel 2006), assimilating the unknown while sustaining the potency of the inexplicable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (Retford, UK: Brynmill Press, 1993), v.
- 2.
The journalists interviewed and observed for this article—in and around Baghdad and Erbil, Iraq; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Beirut, Lebanon—are largely foreign to the countries from which they report, though some have familial and ethnic ties to the region. All were reporting for English-language media (newspapers, magazines, radio, wire services, television, and “digital native” publications) based in North America and the United Kingdom. Research was conducted over eighteen months, from June 2013 to October 2017. Interview locations and content have been scrambled to protect anonymity. Support for this research was generously provided by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and The Humanities Institute at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
- 3.
Gaye Tuchman, “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual,” American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 4 (1972).
- 4.
James Clifford, “Feeling Historical,” in Writing Culture and the Life of Anthropology, ed. Orin Starn (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 31.
- 5.
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 101.
- 6.
Edward Tylor, Primitive Culture (London: John Murray, 1903), 119.
- 7.
G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 179.
- 8.
James Siegel, Naming the Witch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 25.
- 9.
James Frazer, The Golden Bough (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 27.
- 10.
Many journalists disavow the label “war correspondent.” That one’s professional identity would be linked to war and conflict is anathema to many journalists, who tend to view their topical charge as human suffering rather than “war.” This titular preference reflects a topical shift: where war reportage once focused on battlefield progress and the glories of combat, today’s news is more concerned with trauma, suffering, and the social effects of conflict.
- 11.
The “dateline”—the locational designation at the beginning of most foreign news stories in daily newspapers—marks the reporter’s proximity to an event. I’ve been told of journalists traveling to remote or dangerous locations simply to achieve a particular dateline, even when presence at that location did not bear on the narrative produced. True or not, the rumor indicates the professional value of proximity as guarantee of authenticity and, thereby, of authority.
- 12.
Roy Wagner, The Invention of Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 43.
- 13.
Wagner, The Invention of Culture, 93.
- 14.
Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978), 57.
- 15.
Owen Davies, Magic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3.
- 16.
Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
- 17.
George Bataille, The Accursed Share (New York: Zone Books, 1991).
- 18.
To translate these terms from the Arabic would unsettle the meanings journalists deploy through their use. As foreign correspondence is “our” magic (that is, as English-language news “belongs” to the reality shared by English-language journalists and their audiences), so do these words become “ours,” making meanings distinct from those made in the language communities of their origin.
- 19.
Branislaw Malinowski, Coral Gardens and Their Magic (London: Unwin Brothers, 1935), 218.
- 20.
Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic (London: Routledge, 2001), 71.
- 21.
Wagner, The Invention of Culture, 106.
- 22.
Roman Jakobson, in Fundamentals of Language (Paris: Mouton, 1956), suggests a link between the Frazerian bipartition of imitation/contagion and the literary bipartition of metaphor/metonym. If contagious magic corresponds to metonymy, we might see how “terrorism” and “suicide bomber,” or even “Iraq” and “Middle East,” assume a metonymic power in the news—signifying lawless violence, a place of lawlessness, an irrational actor or culture or religion—and as such do the magical work of expressing and thereby controlling the foreign through contact and correspondence.
- 23.
Siegel, Naming the Witch, 229.
- 24.
Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 55.
- 25.
Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 55.
- 26.
Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 220.
- 27.
Siegel, Naming the Witch, 229.
- 28.
Claude Levi-Strauss, Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss (Oxford: Routledge, 1987), 62–63.
- 29.
Allen Feldman, Archives of the Insensible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 6.
- 30.
Antoine Bousquet, “The Obscure Object That Is Violence,” The Disorder of Things, September 7, 2011, https://thedisorderofthings.com/2011/09/07/the-obscure-object-that-is-violence/#more-4133.
- 31.
Siegel, Naming the Witch, 25.
- 32.
See, for example, George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
- 33.
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 18.
- 34.
James Boon, Verging on Extra-Vagance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 160.
- 35.
Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, 151.
Works Cited
Asad, Talal. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Bataille, George. The Accursed Share: Volume 1. New York: Zone Books, 1991.
Boon, James. Verging on Extra-Vagance: Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts… Showbiz. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
Bousquet, Antoine. “The Obscure Object That Is Violence.” The Disorder of Things, Sept 7, 2011. Accessed August 1, 2014. https://thedisorderofthings.com/2011/09/07/the-obscure-object-that-is-violence/#more-4133.
Clifford, James. “Feeling Historical.” In Writing Culture and the Life of Anthropology, edited by Orin Starn, 25–34. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
Davies, Owen. Magic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
De Martino, Ernesto. Magic: A Theory from the South. Translated and annotated by Dorothy Zinn. Chicago: HAU Books, 2015.
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Fassin, Didier. Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012.
Favret-Saada. Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Feldman, Allen. Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics, and Dead Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Frazer, James. The Golden Bough. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978.
Jakobson, Roman. Fundamentals of Language. Paris: Mouton, 1956.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss. Oxford: Routledge, 1987.
Lloyd, Geoffrey E.R. Polarity and Analogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Malinowski, Branislaw. Coral Gardens and Their Magic. London: Unwin Brothers, 1935.
Marcus, George, and Michael Fischer. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Mauss, Marcel. A General Theory of Magic. London: Routledge, 2001.
Siegel, James. Naming the Witch. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.
Tuchman, Gaye. “Objectivity as Strategic Ritual.” American Journal of Sociology 77, no. 4 (1972): 660–79.
Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom. London: John Murray, 1903.
Wagner, Roy. The Invention of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Edited by Rush Rhees. Retford, UK: Brynmill Press, 1993.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blacksin, I. (2022). Violence, Magic, Certainty: Journalistic Worlding and Middle East War. In: Chou, S.S., Kim, S., Wilson, R.S. (eds) Geo-Spatiality in Asian and Oceanic Literature and Culture. Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04047-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04047-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-04046-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-04047-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)