Damni J. Partridge
UC Berkeley
May 1999  
 
Challenging the traditional sites of ethnographic production, anthropologist John Borneman and Linda Fisher, et. al. move to the web. They expand the possibilities of textuality and rationality by taking affect seriously.  Moving in a different direction from film, which directs the path of spectatorship through a pre-determined sequence of sounds and images, the web-site's authors use audio/visual media as part of a self-guided tour, putting the viewer/reader in a position of being there (experiencing the 'field') in a way that texts by themselves make difficult if not impossible.  

        In the introduction to a forthcoming edited volume with the same title Death of the Father: An Anthropology of Political Closure, John Borneman writes: "The death of political authority figures like fathers or leaders is usually experienced as liberation or loss.  Liberation because relations to such figures constrain through the exercise of authority; loss because the relations bind through emotional ties" (1999: 9).  The volume, like the web-site, traces transitions from what Borneman calls totalizing rule to attempts and sometimes failures to achieve more democratic rule.  The themes of fatherhood, death and transition underlie the written text as well as the web-site as Borneman and the other authors explore transitions and deaths of political leaders in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the socialist republics of Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. 

        In the web-site the textual strategy of explicit argumentation re-appears in the form of questions.  As the surfer arrives on the introductory page, she is greeted with the title in red on an all black page and the names of various leaders: "Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito, Ceausescu, Stalin, Tito...  How did they die?  Why is it important?" An image to the left represents what seems to be a political leader in military uniform.  It is crossed out with a graffiti-like "X." The underlying text raises a few more questions about political leadership and fatherhood while explaining that the web-site is a collaborative project by a "team of anthropologists and artists" to explore the above issues.  From here, the surfer can "enter."

        In a web version of a "choose your own adventure" like story, the next page offers the possibility of learning more about different "fathers and regimes." As the surfer moves the cursor from the image of one leader to the next, the image becomes something like a tomb-stone carving of the picture that was just there, and a text appears with the name of the leader and his country.

        Clicking on one of these images, the surfer arrives at a page with text in the middle and images on either side.  In each case, the authors have organized the text chronologically in terms of "Form of Authority," "Death and Transition," and "Consequences." Within each of these subsections on the page, the surfer finds a brief history and pictures on both sides. 

        The brief histories work authoritatively to explain the history around each theme.  How did the leader come to power?  How did he die?  What resulted from the death?  The links made between these implied questions come less through explicit accounts of those affected themselves (i.e. "the people"), than from assertions made in the text and the visual and aural evidence.  Pictures on the side of each text link the surfer to different representations of the three main themes: "Form of Authority," "Death and Transition," and "Consequences." As noted above, the similarity of these themes in each case suggests a certain position in relation to how these various deaths and transitions should be understood.  The uniformity of these themes across geographical and political regions creates an interesting tension between what "in fact" happened and how each specific history relates to these broader themes.

        A notion of "consequences," for example, seems to fit best in the case of "Hitler and Germany" where partition can without question be directly linked to Hitler's form of authority, his loss of the war, and his subsequent death.  When the surfer clicks on the image of fragments of the Berlin Wall to the right of the text, she arrives at a larger version of this image with the caption "after (dis)illusion, during unification." (In the case of each image that appears as part of the sub categories, a clever caption offers another dimension to both the image and text.)   When the surfer clicks on an ear in the top right-hand corner of the page, she hears the beginning of the Haydn quartet version of the theme for the German National Anthem.  This anthem is overlayed with the anthem of the German Democratic Republic in a kind of dissonance that is finally resolved as the sound clip finishes again with only the melody from the Federal Republic's anthem (the same as the original anthem).  While there is musical resolution, the caption implies an ongoing process of transition or "unification." Underneath, a text explains that the image is the "Berlin Wall dismantled and an abandoned guard tower." Beneath this, another text explains the music that the surfer has presumably already heard.  Each picture link on each Father and Country page works similarly, adding new dimensions of complexity through the available media. 

        In the "Form of Authority" section of the Hitler and Germany page, when the surfer clicks on an image of two women smiling and looking at a picture of Hitler, she finds that this is "something for home" as the caption reads.  Text beneath the image explains, "A customer in a German art shop chooses a portrait of Hitler for a special Christmas gift..."  The music of the Horst Wessel Song, which became the Nazi national anthem, adds yet another dimension to understanding and experiencing the identification with Hitler and his form of authority. In both the image and the music, the surfer finds clear and believable articulations of pleasure.                

        On the Tito and Yugoslavia page, this pleasure is also captured in relation to images of crowds around Tito's train.  On a linked page, people smile and attempt to shake Tito's hand.  When the surfer clicks on the ear in the upper right-hand corner of this page, music plays form the "popular song" "Comrade Tito." In the historical text of the "Form of Authority" section of the Tito and Yugoslavia page, the site authors credit Tito with unifying the country through slogans of unity and brotherhood.  When the surfer clicks on the other image in the sub-section "Form of Authority," she finds Tito in military uniform saluting troops on a rainy day.  The caption reads "reigning order." Again, through the click of the ear, an old American News Reel reveals a surprising alliance between the U.S. and Yugoslavia: "A nation unique in the Western defense alliance as communist but starkly anti-Russian..." The music and self-assured voice of the narrator who reads the news reel provides an interesting (if not ironic) perspective for the contemporary American surfer much as the news reel that accompanies the linked picture of the gulag watch tower on the "Form of Authority" section of the Stalin and Soviet Union page does.  The 1940 American News Reel extols "Stalin's great friendship with the people." While the actual audio clip is difficult to understand, it works to provide documentary evidence, to place the surfer in the historical context through sound.

        Again, in as much as the uniformity of categories across geographical and political spaces provides a framework for comparability, it also raises questions about the web-site authors' conclusions.  The "Consequences" sub-section of the Tito and Yugoslavia page links Tito's death to "ethnic conflict": "[B]rotherhood and unity dissolved quickly following Tito's death." When the surfer clicks on the image to the left of the historical text in the middle of this sub-section, she finds an enlarged image of a man being held by a soldier while another soldier pores something from a bottle over his head.  The caption reads "ethnic cleansing," and underneath, the surfer learns that "a young Bosnian Moslem man is doused with water by two Serb police after being thrown out a window." The humor here seems cruel, and while the combination of text and image does access the affective realm--placing the surfer in a relation of cruelty and hatred through her laughter or outrage, by repeating the joke, it is not clear what the author's relationship to it is.  Furthermore, one beings to wonder how such cruelty could have been held at bay for so long by one leader.  How might it have manifested itself before?  Why did it explode?  Was it just Tito's death or also the end of socialism?  In as much as the site raises these questions, it also sparks interest.

        The page on Mussolini and Italy (and its associated links) works slightly differently than the other pages.  When the surfer clicks on the picture next to the text in the "Form of Authority" sub-section, like the equivalent sub-section on the Tito and Yugoslavia page, she is greeted with an image of the leader surrounded by a mass of people. Here, the caption reads, "a 'duce' is born." This refers to Mussolini alias, but unlike other equivalent pages, provides no further commentary.  While the surfer learns that this is a picture of "Mussolini on balcony of his palace in Piazza Venezia, in Rome...at the height of his popularity, May 5, 1936," the accompanying music, Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (1943), works more like a film music score as opposed to bringing the spectator to the historical moment itself.  Much like spectatorship in the cinema, distance is achieved instead of being undermined.