jane austen

Western civilization seems now to be evolving into some form of post-techno-capitalist society in which the meanings of grand signs like ‘Progress’ and ‘Freedom’ have shifted to signify only higher corporate profits, improved industrial efficiency and wider consumer choice. Our postmodern world seems very likely to become one of spiritual emptiness and cultural superficiality, in which social practices are endlessly repeated and parodied, a fragmented world of alienated individuals with no sense of self or history, tuned into a thousand different TV channels. This is certainly the vision of both present and future offered to us by the postmodernist Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929). For him, this postmodern world is one of simulacra in which there is no longer any difference between reality and surface. Modern citizens will not be ‘Overpeople’ – just consumers of media in a world of signs without signifiers.

For Syria’s war is characterised most strongly by absence and collective abandonment. Other than the protagonists and victims the arena is almost empty. There is no foreign military intervention. There are no NGOs or aid workers distributing food and blankets. The media is similarly self-exiled: very few broadcasters or newspapers commit journalists regularly, if at all. A handful of freelance photographers work inside the country, but none of the big names. The middle-aged bravehearts of Bosnia and Afghanistan have grown old and too soft for the hardships of Syria, while the economics of journalism have not allowed their replacement generation to prosper. That McCullin, still a prizefighter despite his years, had hauled himself out to that lonely war zone was inspiring in itself, legitimising the work of the few freelancers already there and challenging the absentees.