Book dossier

Video, war, and the diasporic imagination

by Dona Kolar-Panov

Video, War and the Diasporic Imagination is an incisive study of the loss and (re)construction of collective and personal identities in ethnic migrant communities. Focusing on the Croatian and Macedonian communities in Western Australia, Dona Kolar-Panov documents the social and cultural changes that affected these diasporic groups due to the fragmentation of Yugoslovia. She vividly describes the migrant audience's daily encounter with the media images of destruction and atrocities committed in Croatia and Bosnia, and charts the implications the continuous viewing of the real and excessive violence had on the awakening of their ethno-national consciousness. The author provides a valuable and unique insight into how migrant cultures are shaped and changed through the reception and assimilation of images seen on video and television screens. Using the combination of close and powerful semiotic analysis of video texts with an informed account of social, political and historical contexts, Kolar-Panov recalls the complex relationships between ethnicity, technology and the reconstruction of identity.