The recent killing of four Americans in Benghazi over an online video about the prophet Mohammad, has prompted a myriad of responses in the Western media.
Most register a deep anger over the violence and some like Defence Secretary Leon Panetta have labelled the Muslim violence as a terrorist attack.
The general consensus in the U.S. media is that such acts are violent and violence is unecessary and uncalled for as a reaction against a mere visual representation of a Muslim religious figure.
Little attention has been given to the possibility of representation, whether visual, written or aural, as being an act of violence itself.
The assumption is that all acts of violence are physical.
Even academics in their otherwise insightful explanation of the incident, don't consider violence to inhere in certain acts of representation.
I agree that the Muslim rage over every bit of trivialization of their religious symbols is an overreaction. The trivialization isn't something one condones, but the Muslim reaction should have been a little more controlled and proportionate to the offence committed.
Yet isn't the video portrayal of Prophet in a mocking tone a sacrilegeous act in complicated ways? Isn't representation an act of violation? Do all violence have to be committed on the body?
Edward Said's take on the violence of representation resonates here. He saw representation as an act of power--in a world of unequal distribution of power, the powerful often end up representating the powerless in ways that are violating. In such instances the powerless hit back at the powerful through bodily violence.
The video is a mere video. But the Muslims, in context of a world where Muslims see themselves as powerless victims in the face of Western machination to subordinate them, see the video as an act of violence.
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