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Modern witnesses: foreign correspondents, geopolitical vision, and the First World War
Author(s) -
Farish Matthew
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/1475-5661.00022
Subject(s) - witness , geopolitics , narrative , representation (politics) , perspective (graphical) , position (finance) , front (military) , history , first world war , political economy , political science , sociology , aesthetics , law , geography , literature , ancient history , art , visual arts , politics , economics , finance , meteorology
The First World War was the first modern, mediated conflict. In this paper I argue that British correspondents on the Western front attempting to accurately witness the war encountered a crisis of representation and visuality. They occupied a particularly unstable position between the many sites and points of view within a cubist landscape of shattered geographies and unstable boundaries. Their writings, though rich in masculinist and nationalistic accounts of heroism, also contain a newer perspective characterized by the failure to fit these older narratives into the inhuman, incomprehensible spaces of modern war.