Quaderni di Venezia Arti

Series | Quaderni di Venezia Arti
Edited book | In my End is my Beginning
Chapter | Mary Kelly’s ‘Montage du Désastre’, a Work of Death and Rebirth

Mary Kelly’s ‘Montage du Désastre’, a Work of Death and Rebirth

Abstract

Mary Kelly’s The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi is a work that recounts an episode from the Kosovo war, reflecting on the paradoxical nature of traumatic events. In my essay, I will examine the anachronistic layering of semantic levels that the work exhibits, assuming that it creates a dialectical image” through the discontinuous relationship between death and rebirth. Hubert Damisch’s concept of the ‘montage du désastre’ helps us to re-read the parable of the child in the title of the work, by reflecting on the mechanisms of the spectacularisation of the chronicle and on the ultimate possibility of giving a ‘figurability’ of the testimony.


Open access

Submitted: Oct. 1, 2024 | Published Dec. 11, 2024 | Language: en

Keywords DeathTraumaWarRebirthMontage


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