Abstract
At the core of Susan Schuppli’s book is the concept ‘material witness’, which she defines as an exploration of the evidential role of matter as registering external events as well as exposing the practices and procedures that enable such matter to bear witness. Material witnesses are nonhuman entities and machinic ecologies that archive their complex interactions with the world, producing ontological transformations and informatic dispositions that can be forensically decoded and reassembled back into a history. Material witnesses operate as double agents: harbouring direct evidence of events as well as providing circumstantial evidence of the interlocutory methods and epistemic frameworks whereby such material comes to be consequential. (p. 3)
The book explores a range of case studies precisely with the aim of revealing how ‘different forms of technical media have combined to record a violation or transgression’ (pp. 3–4). It is structured and organised in a very innovative way – each chapter is a key element of a court case, starting with ‘Opening Statements’, then moving on to ‘Discovery’, ‘Hostile Witness’, ‘Hearsay’, ‘Motion to Strike’, ‘Damages’, ‘Toxic Tort’, ‘Cross-Examination’, ‘Expert Witness’, ‘Burden of Proof’, ‘Failure to Appear’, ‘Closing Arguments’ and ‘Convictions’ (pp. ix–xi). Each of the substantive chapters is focussed on one or two case studies – from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 to the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, the Accidental napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972, the International War Crimes Tribunal in 1966–1967, the massacre in Izbica, Kosovo in 1999 and in Vukovar, Croatia in 1991 and an anonymous Sri Lankan execution video from 2009. Various materials are used throughout the book, including photographs and transcripts. Through the various case studies and materials, Schuppli not only makes a strong point about the need to consider the importance of materials as they ‘register their complex interactions with the world, producing ontological transformations and informatic dispositions that can be forensically decoded and reassembled back into a history’ (p. 308), but also challenges researchers to reflect upon their practices, methods, theories and discursive frameworks. While the book poses a lot of food for thought, it can be a rather challenging read at times.