Narrating Crisis through the Loyalist Witness

Abstract

Abstract Scholarly interest in Syrian wartime witnessing has overwhelmingly focused on how cultural production bears witness to state violence. In this article, I shift attention to a form of loyalist wartime witnessing by asking how the films of Syrian director Joud Said construct war stories giving meaning to regime narratives of a ‘crisis’. Drawing on two of his films, Maṭar Homs and Darb al-Sama, I argue that Said’s works narrate crisis through the loyalist witness, a subject victim shifting attention towards how armed groups and other Syrian ‘enemies’ perpetrated violence and inflicted trauma on Syrians. In positioning the loyalist witness as the subject through which Syrian trauma is narrated, Said’s films delineate what can and cannot be seen and said about the Syrian conflict. As the subject of his war films, the loyalist witness functions to obscure and render invisible regime violence and responsibility for Syria’s catastrophe.