Hostname: page-component-5f745c7db-tvc9f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-06T07:06:50.377Z Has data issue: true hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Message without a Coda: On the Rhetoric of Photographic Records

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Ryo Morimoto
Ryo Morimoto*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
*
Contact Ryo Morimoto at Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, 415 South St., MS006, Waltham, MA 02453 (ryo@brandeis.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article investigates the rhetoric of the photographic object in the context of the 3.11 disasters in Japan, where this particular object became essential for both commemorating the loss and communicating to future generations about the danger of a large-scale disaster. Through ethnography of the two different subcultures of photographic laboratory, the article documents various sign processes of the disaster-related photograph and argues that in the context of a sudden disaster, both the duty to remember the past and the hope for alternative trajectories for the future are grounded in the same regimented meaning of a particular object which nonetheless can be used to express different subjectivities. As a free-floating object, the photograph is by its nature antisemiotic in that it resists interpretation unless its visual persuasion is domesticated by “ethnometapragmatics,” that is, the highly coded cultural talk about the sociocultural, political, and historical significance of the image or a set of images.

Type
Research Article
Information
Signs and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Fall 2014 , pp. 284 - 313
Copyright
© 2014 by Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I wish to acknowledge the Michinoku Shinrokuden staff, especially Professor Akihiro Shibayama and Professor Fumihiko Imamura, for allowing me to be a part of the development of the archive. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge the many disaster survivors and volunteers whose patience and resilience are simply amazing. I could not have written this article without their unconditional encouragement of a student-researcher like myself. I am indebted to an editor of this journal, Richard Parmentier, who generously provided an opportunity to put together this article. Many insightful comments from a reviewer helped me to polish my often-convoluted arguments. Finally, but not least, I would like to acknowledge Beth Semel for helping me edit many versions of this article. All errors are strictly mine.

References

20th Century Archive Sendai. 2012. 3.11: Record of Memories [3.11 Kioku no Kiroku]. Sendai: 20th Century Archive Sendai Self Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. (1968) 1986. “The Reality Effect.” In The Rustle of Language, 141–48. Trans. Howard, Richard. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1977. “The Photographic Message.” In Image, Music, Text, ed. and trans. Heath, Stephen, 15–31. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Batchen, Geoffrey. 1997. Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. (1981) 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. (1936) 1968. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, 217–52. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. 1995. The Writing of the Disaster. Trans. Smock, Ann. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Daguerre, L. (1939) 1980. “Daguerreotype.” In Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Trachtenberg, A., 11–13. Stony Creek, CT: Leete’s Island Books.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Galison, Peter. 1992. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations 40:81–128.10.2307/2928741CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2007. Objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 2008. “Things That Talk.” In Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed. Daston, Lorraine, 7–8. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.10.1007/978-1-349-15849-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edensor, Tim. 2005. “Waste Matter: The Debris of Industrial Ruins and the Disordering of the Material World.” Journal of Material Culture 10 (3): 311–32.10.1177/1359183505057346CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter. 1997. Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter. 2004. “Removing Knowledge.” Critical Inquiry 31:229–43.10.1086/427309CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. 2008. “Image of Self.” In Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed. Daston, Lorraine, 257–94. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Galison, Peter. 2010. “Trading with the Enemy.” In Trading Zones and Interactional Expertise: Creating New Kinds of Collaboration, ed. Gorman, Michael E., 25–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/8351.003.0004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 2000. “Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought.” In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology, 19–35. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Geller, Robert J. 2011. “Comment: Shake-up Time for Japanese Seismology.” Nature 472 (7344): 407–9.10.1038/nature10105CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geller, Robert J., and Jackson, David D.. 1997. “Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted.” Science 275 (5306): 1616.10.1126/science.275.5306.1616CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1979. “Clues: Roots of a Scientific Paradigm.” Theory and Society 7 (3): 273–88.10.1007/BF00207323CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. 2012. Threads and Traces: True False Fictive. Trans. Tedeschi, Anne C. and Tedeschi, John. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520949843CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haffner, Jennifer. 2013. The View from Above: The Science of Social Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/7878.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imamura, Fumihiko, Sato, Shosuke, and Shibayama, Akihiro. 2012. “‘Michinoku-Shinrokuden’: Digital Archive Project of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster by Industry-Academia-Government-Citizen Collaboration.” Journal of Information Processing and Management 55 (4): 241–52.10.1241/johokanri.55.241CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inoue, Miyako. 2004. “What Does Language Remember? Indexical Inversion and the Naturalized History of Japanese Women.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14 (1): 39–56.10.1525/jlin.2004.14.1.39CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. 2004. “Say When: Temporalities in Language Ideology.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 14 (1): 99–109.10.1525/jlin.2004.14.1.99CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahoku, Shinpo. 2013. “Without Being Able to Meet the Owners: Ishinomaki Photography Center Closed Down” [Mochinushito Aenumama–Ishinomaki Shashinkoukaisenta Heisho]. http://www.kahoku.co.jp/tohokunews/201403/20140316_13016.html.Google Scholar
Kainuma, Hiroshi. 2011 “Fukushima” Theory: Why Was the Nuclear Village Born? [Fukushima Ron: Genshiryokumura ha Nazeumaretaka]. Tokyo: Sekidosha.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 2003. “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things.” Language and Communication 23 (3–4): 409–25.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00010-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kockelman, Paul. 2010. “Enemies, Parasites, and Noise: How to Take Up Residence in a System without Becoming a Term in It.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20 (2): 406–21.10.1111/j.1548-1395.2010.01077.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leone, Massimo, and Parmentier, Richard J.. 2014. “Representing Transcendence: The Semiosis of Real Presence.” Signs and Society 2 (S1): S1–S22.10.1086/674529CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maekawa, Osamu. 2008. “The Difficulty in Talking about the Photograph—the Current Photographic Theory” [Shashin no Katarinikusa—Shashinron no Genzai]. In Beyond the Difficulty in Talking about the Photograph [Shashin Sono Katarinikusa wo Koete], ed. Japanese Association for Semiotic Studies, 92–109. Tokyo: Keio University Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Paul. 2012. Semiotics of Drink and Drinking. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel. 2002. “Artefacts and the Meaning of Things.” In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life, ed. Ingold, Tim, 397–419. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Morimoto, Ryo. 2012. “Shaking Grounds, Unearthing Palimpsests: Semiotic Anthropology of Disaster.” Semiotica 192:263–74.Google Scholar
Munn, Nancy. 1986. “Spatiotemporal Transformations of Gawa Canoes.” Journal de la Sociétéde Oceanistes 33:39–55.10.3406/jso.1977.2942CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murakami, Haruki. 2011. 1Q84. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Nakamura, Fuyubi. 2012. “Memory in the Debris: The 3/11 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.” Anthropology Today 28 (3): 20–23.10.1111/j.1467-8322.2012.00874.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakassis, V. Constantine. 2012. “Brand, Citationality, Performativity.” American Anthropologist 114 (4): 624–38.10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01511.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oliver-Smith, Anthony, and Hoffman, Susanna M.. 2002. “Introduction: Why Anthropologists Should Study Disasters.” In Catastrophe and Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster, ed. Hoffman, Susanna M. and Oliver-Smith, Anthony, 3–22. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Parmentier, Richard J. 1994. Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Parmentier, Richard J.. 1997. “The Pragmatic Semiotics of Cultures.” Semiotica 116 (1): 1–115.Google Scholar
Parmentier, Richard J.. 2012. “The World Has Changed Forever: Semiotic Reflections on the Experience of Sudden Change.” Semiotica 192:235–42.Google Scholar
Parrott, Fiona R. 2010. “Bringing Home the Dead: Photographs, Family Imaginaries and Moral Remains.” In An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss, ed. Bille, Mikkel, Hastrup, Frida, and Sorensen, Tim Flohr, 131–48. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4419-5529-6_8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pelling, Mark, ed. 2003. Natural Disasters and Development in a Globalizing World. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203402375CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Trans. Blamey, Kathleen and Pellauer, David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226713465.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1915) 1966. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Baskin, Wade. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Schnapp, Jeffrey. 2008. “Animating the Archive.” First Monday 13 (8). http://firstmonday./orgojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/2218/2020.10.5210/fm.v13i8.2218CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1979. “Language Structure and Linguistic Ideology.” In The Elements: A Parasession on Linguistic Units and Levels, ed. Clyde, Paul R., Hanks, William F., and Hofbauer, Carol L., 193–247. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2001. “The Limits of Awareness.” In Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader, ed. Duranti, A., 382–401. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003a. “Indexical Order and the Dialectics of Sociolinguistic Life.” Language and Communication 23 (3–4): 193–229.10.1016/S0271-5309(03)00013-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2003b. “Translation, Transduction, Transformation: Skating Glossando on Thin Semiotic Ice.” In Translating Cultures: Perspectives on Translation and Anthropology, ed. Rubel, P. and Rosman, A., 75–105. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2005. Axes of Evals: Token versus Type Interdiscursivity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15 (1): 6–22.10.1525/jlin.2005.15.1.6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 2013. “Discourse and the No-thing-ness of Culture.” Signs and Society 1 (2): 327–66.10.1086/673252CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silverstein, Michael, and Urban, Greg, eds. 1996. The Natural History of Discourse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, Joel. 2008. “Res Ipsa Loquitur.” In Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed. Daston, Lorraine, 195–222. Cambridge, MA: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. 1965. “Imagination of Disaster.” Commentary 65:42–48.Google Scholar
Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Takahashi, Munemasa. 2014. Tsunami, Photographs, and Then: Lost and Found Project. Kyoto: Akaaka Art.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9781503617131CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yomiuri Shinbun. 2012. “320,000 Could Die in Nankai Trough Triple Earthquake.” Yomiuri Shinbun, August 31. http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20120831-368804.html.Google Scholar
Yuasa, Masae. 2013. “The Future of August 6th 1945: A Case of the ‘Peaceful Utilization’ of Nuclear Energy in Japan.” In Origins and Futures: Time Inflected and Reflected, ed. Steineck, Raji and Clausius, Claudia, 235–58. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill.10.1163/9789004252004_014CrossRefGoogle Scholar