Cartographies of silence: audiovisual narrative, forced displamement, and visibility regimes

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reflection on what we term Cartographies of Silence — a mapping of the ways in which the experiences and voices of displaced populations are systematically erased or rendered invisible within the power dynamics that shape global narratives. Drawing on the image of Syrian child Aylan Kurdi as a symbolic turning point, the text examines the inability of contemporary visual representations to translate moral shock into effective political action. The analysis is organized around three conceptual axes — cartography, silence, and invisibility — to explore how the geopolitical ordering of the world produces zones of exception in which refugees and displaced persons are criminalized and confined. The documentary No Other Land (2024) is examined as a paradigmatic example of audiovisual counter-narrative, foregrounding both the camera as an instrument of testimony against historical erasure and the structural asymmetry revealed by the friendship between Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. In dialogue with Susan Sontag, Georges Didi-Huberman, Achille Mbembe, Veena Das, and Edward Said, the article argues that audiovisual narratives can function as historical sources and archival denunciations. It further proposes the concept of necrodiplomacy to describe the exception territories produced by the complicity between imperialist states and their communication structures