Le séminaire « Arts et Cultures Visuelles » et le séminaire “Histoire du Politique” organisent une séance conjointe le 14 mai 2025 en accueillant Kim A. Wagner, professeur invité de l’Université Paris Cité.
L’entrée est libre. La séance se tiendra en salle 830 du bâtiment Olympe de Gouges (Place Paul Ricœur, 75013, Paris)
Il abordera son projet de recherche actuel autour des photographies du massacre de My Lai (Vietnam, mars 1968).
(Un)Seeing the My Lai Massacre.
Abstract: In 1968, US troops killed 500 unarmed civilians, mostly old men and women and children, in the Quang Ngai Province of South Vietnam. The My Lai Massacre remains one of the most infamous, and most studied atrocities in US history, and yet, almost six decades on, we have only a poor understanding of the events of March 16, 1968. American historians in particular tend to describe the event squarely from the perspective of the ‘young’, ‘scared’ and ‘frustrated’ US soldiers, and make much of the handful of American ‘heroes’ who helped expose the massacre. Too often, My Lai is framed as something that primarily happened to America and to Americans, and a focus on veterans’ trauma has further helped turn the perpetrators into victims and to render the real victims invisible. Challenging the redemptive narrative, this talk examines the relationship between memory and photography to provide a critical reassessment of My Lai.
Kim A. Wagner est Professeur d’histoire globale et impériale à Queen Mary, Université de Londres. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur l’impérialisme, la résistance et la violence coloniale, dont The Skull of Alum Bheg et Amritsar 1919. Son dernier livre, Massacre in the Clouds : An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History, a été publié par Public Affairs en mai 2024.
