Lessons from Sarajevo
216 pages, 6 x 9
26 b&w illus.
Paperback
Release Date:03 Jun 2013
ISBN:9781625340016
In today's world, our television screens are filled with scenes from countless conflicts across the globe—commanding our attention and asking us to choose sides. In this insightful and wide-ranging book, Jim Hicks treats historical representation, and even history itself, as a text, asking questions such as Who is speaking?, Who is the audience?, and What are the rules for this kind of talk? He argues that we must understand how war stories are told in order to arm ourselves against them. In a democracy, we are each responsible for policy decisions taken on our behalf. So it is imperative that we gain fluency in the diverse forms of representation (journalism, photography, fiction, memoir, comics, cinema) that bring war to us.
Hicks explores the limitations of the sentimental tradition in war representation and asks how the work of artists and writers can help us to move beyond the constraints of that tradition. Ranging from Walt Whitman's writings on the Civil War to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focusing on the innovative and creative artistic expressions arising out of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, Hicks examines how war has been perceived, described, and interpreted. He analyzes the limitations on knowledge caused by perspective and narrative position and looks closely at the distinct yet overlapping roles of victims, observers, and aggressors. In the end, he concludes, war stories today should be valued according to the extent they make it impossible for us to see these positions as assigned in advance, and immutable.
Hicks explores the limitations of the sentimental tradition in war representation and asks how the work of artists and writers can help us to move beyond the constraints of that tradition. Ranging from Walt Whitman's writings on the Civil War to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focusing on the innovative and creative artistic expressions arising out of the wars of the former Yugoslavia, Hicks examines how war has been perceived, described, and interpreted. He analyzes the limitations on knowledge caused by perspective and narrative position and looks closely at the distinct yet overlapping roles of victims, observers, and aggressors. In the end, he concludes, war stories today should be valued according to the extent they make it impossible for us to see these positions as assigned in advance, and immutable.
Lessons from Sarajevo introduces such a variety of war stories in such vivid terms that almost all readers will find themselves—as I did—heading straight for the Internet to look up films and order books. Hicks has written a book that should stimulate much discussion about a topic that is—unfortunately—not about to go away.'—Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization
'I found Hicks's book engaging, provocative, well researched, and incredibly useful. His sense of history is both deeply informed and extremely nuanced. . . . He is quite adept at choosing exemplary moments or texts to concisely and efficiently illustrate complex arguments. . . . This is a book whose claims and arguments deserve attention.'—Ammiel Alcalay, author of After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture
'Hicks notes that in a democracy, 'we are each responsible for policy decisions taken on our behalf. So it is imperative that we gain fluency in the diverse forms of representation . . . that bring war to us.' Lessons from Sarajevo is illustrated with a wealth of images, from seminal photographs of corpses on Civil War battlefields to newsmagazine covers from the 1990s of emaciated prisoners in Bosnia.'—Daily Hampshire Gazette
'Hicks is here using 'grammar' in a structural sense, as a way to look at the underlying epistemological structures that informs modern approaches to understanding the organized violence known as warfare. . . . It is worth noting that the author has been teaching a class on war stories for ten years, and his approach to teaching the subject material is clearly the basis for this volume. Recommended.'—Choice
'In this powerful book, Jim Hicks explores a collection of narratives about the experience of war in many genres and a wide range of media that eschew the sentimental.'—The Arts Fuse
'I just finished Jim Hicks's Lessons from Sarajevo--a very deft critique of the 'war story,' and so glad that it's out there, deconstructing the ossified positions of observer, victim, and aggressor. I feel I've found a comrade in prose, in an area that deserves more thinking, more feeling, more work. . . . Thanks, Jim!'—Philip Metres, author of Abu Ghraib Arias
Jim Hicks is editor of The Massachusetts Review and teaches comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
