lararosenoff

Summarized Thesis Project Proposal:

“When elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled”:

Girls’ stories of displacement, conflict and motherhood.

“For decades they were largely ignored or forgotten, but together they probably comprise the world’s largest group of vulnerable people.” (UNHCR, 2006). Currently, there are over 26 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in at least 50 countries living amidst war and persecution. Displacement, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, remains “arguably the most significant humanitarian challenge that we face” (NRC, 2008).

“Armed conflicts have devastating implications on people, societies and economies worldwide, with extreme impacts on the lives of women and girls. While conflict challenges women’s survival capabilities and strategies, their capabilities and contributions in all phases are not fully recognized and appreciated. Women shoulder the economic and psychological burdens of their families, play foremost roles in supporting their communities and take on roles in peace-building and reconciliation. In essence, they are becoming key contributors to rebuilding equitable and democratic civil societies.” (UNFPA 2002).

When Elephants Fight is a documentary re-presentation of girls’ stories from northern Uganda. Based on personal testimony, it will explore lives directly affected by internal displacement, conflict and motherhood in the form of a photo and video-based installation in a public space and a website. The goal of this documentary work is to engage the Canadian public in a crucial dialogue concerning Internally Displaced People (IDPs), women and conflict, and the responsibilities of the international community in the face of human rights violations, crimes against humanity and atrocities. The emphasis on personal girls’ stories is to bring specific attention to the needs, and empowerment of the capabilities, of these women. The focus also serves to break the mass media’s stereotypical portrayal of conflict and displacement in Africa.

Aceng Beatrice lives in Padibe Internally Displaced Person’s (IDP) Camp in northern Uganda. She is 17 years old and pregnant. The war in northern Uganda began 4 years before she was born. Aside from the conflict’s direct violence, her father was killed by Karamajong cattle raiders when she was 1 year old and her mother died of AIDS when she was 8, leaving Aceng to drop out of school to take care of her siblings. At age 10 her and her brothers were forced by the Government’s Army (UPDF) to move into Padibe IDP Camp because of the rising violence in the war waged by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). At the height of the war, 1.8 million people were displaced into IDP camps across northern Uganda. However, with no access to land for cultivation, severe overcrowding and no access to proper sanitation facilities and water, the situation in the camps became more dangerous and life threatening than “unprotected” life in the bush (countryside). Aceng was abducted by the LRA rebel forces at the age of 13 and still will not speak about the life she was forced to live with the infamously brutal group. She was able to escape at age 15 during crossfire, however she is currently estranged from her brothers (as of January 2008), and because land passes through the males in the family, has no place to go despite the resettlement occurring due to a cease-fire in hostilities. Her life may sound like a life filled with horror and tragedies, but you would be wrong to assume that she is miserable. And although the war is the only life she has even known, you would be wrong to assume that she is desperate. And although her opportunities and possibilities for the future seem bleak, you would be wrong to assume that she lives without hope. Actually, you would be wrong to assume anything about Aceng.

My IDP research is largely based on my experiences of the past four years on the ground in northern Uganda where I have traveled to and stayed in over 12 IDP camps and spoken with girl IDPs, former abductees and many civil society and international groups. I will continue that research, along with 6 weeks of photographic and video documentation on the ground this summer. The books of David Keen, Erin Baines, as well as the ongoing reports of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC- Geneva) and Gulu NGO Forum (Gulu, Uganda) figure prominently in my research in this area. Partnerships with GuluWalk, IDMC, Peace Girl, Resolve Uganda, and Professor Frank Chalk and Romeo Dallaire’s project “The Will to Intervene” (Concordia University) on the responsibility to protect initiative will contextualize my project as well as provide important activist and policy-oriented “next step” possibilities for viewers to engage in and lend their voices to.

This critical-emancipatory work seeks to engage the public in questioning the transnational economic and political system, (of which both we and IDPs are a part) through the documentary act of bearing witness. The idea of documentary as bearing witness is itself a tradition that dates back to the end of the 1800’s and has earlier roots in the ideals of a free press (Newton, J.H., p.98). In the postmodern discourse of documentary however, there seems to be a turning to the idea of questioning and uncertainty that was not previously acknowledged by the modernist tradition (Nichols, Renov). This approach to documentary deals with the “uncertainization” of life and truth’s pursuit, and therefore problematizes the idea of witnessing and artistic testimony through representation, the indexical acts of reference upon which they rely and the issues associated with speaking for others. According to Shoshana Felman however, “…the appointment to bear witness is, paradoxically enough, an appointment to transgress the confines of that isolated stance, to speak for others and to others.” (p.3).

There is also the urgent question regarding the efficacy of bearing witness within the depoliticized areas of contemporary life. Habermas notes (1975) that most people have abandoned the public and political realm, enabling elites to deal with crises unencumbered by lengthy public debate. He calls it “civil-privatism” and states that everyday life is a- or anti-political. Sandel feels similarly and posits that “…if politics is to recover its civic voice, it must again find a way to debate questions we have forgotten to ask.” (Sandel, M.J. p.58).

How then can a postmodern documentary reconcile its need to bear witness? In an age of civil-privatism, can we still believe that witnessing will compel people to the active betterment of society? And how can documentary, as an epistemological resource, broach these subjects and offer new forms and possibilities for the public’s active participation in transformative and critical discourse?

While child mother and girl IDPs’ stories are the focus of When Elephants Fight, this work also seeks to explore these pressing documentary issues. These questions will guide my research within the fields of documentary, visual studies, communications theory, philosophy and trauma studies. Issues concerning compassion fatigue, the crises in witnessing, the possibilities of collective response-ability and the nuances of testimony will largely shape the final forms of this project.