Political Discourse and Resistance in the Movie The Photographer of Mauthausen

Abstract

From the theoretical perspective of French Discourse Analysis, in dialogue with the Semantics of the Events, we take as object of analysis the movie The Photographer of Mauthausen. It tells the story of Francesc Boix, a former soldier in Spanish Civil War, imprisoned in the concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria, during the World War II. We aim to understand how the movie' s narrative mobilizes the political discourse and resistance of the subject. The political discourse is the conflict in language because the real has an uneven division; the political discourse in the movie takes inscription into different significant materialities: the smuggling of banal objects, the artifices to hide incriminating evidence, the discourse and the body itself. When resisting, the subject can stir up the discourse, as well as constitute other meanings and subject positions. That is what the significant materialities show: the refusal in assuming only the prisoner identity imposed on them.

Keywords:
Discourse Analysis; Mauthausen; Political Discourse; Resistance