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Performativität, Reembodiment und Auratisierung: Multimodale Diskursstrategien des testimonialen Diskurses in Que bom te ver viva (1989) von Lúcia Murat und Subversivos von André Diniz (1999ff.)


Authors: Sebastian Thies, Suzana Vasconcelos de Melo
[published in: IMAGE 28 (Ausgabe Juli 2018)]


The following contribution, which combines multimodal media analysis with a cultural-scientific approach, examines the medialization of testimonial discourses based on two examples: the performative documentary "Que bom te ver viva" (1989) by Lúcia Murat and the comic series "Subversivos" (1999ff.) by André Diniz. Both are about sexualized torture of female members of the resistance against the Brazilian military dictatorship, both process testimonial discourses and combine this negotiation with a reflective aesthetic transgression of the prevailing memory discourses of their time. The mediatization of testimonies on torture generally raises questions of media aesthetics and media ethics concerning the limits of what can be said and represented in media discourses. In our two case studies – which are connected through intermedial references and aesthetic transpositions, where narrative and pictorial motifs from Murat's documentary appear in the comic series – multimodality plays a key role. As a set of discursive strategies, multimodality helps evoke an experiential spectrum beyond what can be said and what can be visualized. The cross-media comparison draws the attention to the interaction of different semiotic modalities, which construct the embodiments of suffering and traumatic experience in testimonial narratives. As these strategies are embedded in the ways in which testimonial discourse models and reflects complex world references, which are situated at the borders of subjectivity, facticity and performativity of cultural memory, this contribution also shows how referential modalities can be a useful dimension to expand the scope of possible applica-tions for multimodal media analysis.


Volltext des Artikels:

08_IMAGE 28_ThiesMelo.pdf