Opening The Fortress : the work of public gaze on the Swiss asylum reality
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Version: author
Serval ID
serval:BIB_5D80414829BC
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Opening The Fortress : the work of public gaze on the Swiss asylum reality
Journal
Javnost - The Public : Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2015
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
22
Number
1
Pages
73-91
Language
english
Notes
Special issue : Publics, Discursive Struggle and Political Agency.
Abstract
The Fortress (La Forteresse) is a 2008 documentary film by Fernand Melgar that reports the Swiss asylum reality from a distant but committed point of view. The documentary describes the life of asylum seekers awaiting in a federal centre the decision to grant them-or not-refugee status. It subtly raises the issue of the role that "textual realities", grasped from the spectator's point of view, play in the production of public discourses. Most of all, it subtly poses the question of the (Swiss) spectator as an actor of the asylum policy, in the context of a semi-direct democracy. After evoking the notion of sensible experience for linking spectatorship to politics, we look at how the documentary invites its model spectator to accept the film's moral premises. Furthermore, focusing on the Swiss public sphere, we deliver an account of the reception by empirical spectators, notably by a group of leftist activists that tend to subvert Melgar's intentions. This two-fold analysis leads us to exhibit that, in a context of discursive struggles, The Fortress generates an original space of deliberation and experience, which appeals to the public to exercise their political agency on asylum policy without being constricted by an antagonist framework.
Keywords
asylum, documentary, public sphere, spectator, "sensible experience"
Publisher's website
Open Access
Yes
Create date
30/09/2014 13:07
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:15