Stills from the film Diary of an Unknown Soldier by Peter Watkins (1959) / See past article

The second series of The Funambulist Papers, dedicated to the bodies is almost over (four more texts soon forthcoming), and the book that collects its essays is currently being edited. Today, we have the chance to read a text written by Derek Gregory (see our past conversation on Archipelago) about the concept of corpography, which attempts to give a reading of the war based on bodily experience. The relation between the First World War’s soldiers and the mud (see Peter Watkins’s first and fascinating film above) is one instance, but Derek particularly insists on the sonic aspect of the war: the sound of the guns and the bombs being simultaneously terrifying as an affect (see the descriptions by Mohammed Omer about last summer’s bombing of Gaza as a Wagner dreadful symphony), but also…