Discourse that is closer to silence than to talk: The politics and possibilities of reporting on victims of war1

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Abstract
This essay weighs the possibility of a postmodern political knowledge that “refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable”; as suggested by Jean‐Francois Lyotard, as opposed to the prospect for a new and oppressive metanarrative of “'Fortress America’ in a hostile world”; as suggested by Daniel Hallin. In particular, this essay examines news accounts of lives caught in the midst of violent political conflict—accounts of suffering and death that, as Peter Bruck wrote, record a discourse “closer to silence than to talk. “ The essay concludes that we can read such journalism as a flight from chaos and a demand for order but that we may choose, instead, to read it as an appeal for human solidarity in the midst of history's cruelest contingencies. Richard Rorty provides the framework for this alternative reading.

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