Doing Memory, Documenting Disasters. The commemoration of the Palomares 1966 and the Buffalo Creek 1972 disasters in documentary films
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/dre.v27i1.4398Keywords:
agnotology, counterimages, disaster studies, memory studiesAbstract
This paper examines how public commemorative practices can challenge the strategic production of ignorance surrounding disasters. Focusing on three documentaries—Broken Arrow 29 (Dina Hecht, 1986), which revisits the 1966 Palomares disaster, and Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975) together with Buffalo Creek Revisited (1984), both directed by Mimi Pickering and addressing the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster—we analyze how counterimages generated by these films confront official accounts and dominant interpretive frameworks. We argue that the documentaries illuminate the extent to which disaster imagery is embedded in asymmetrical power relations and becomes a site of contestation between state and cooperative authorities and disaster-affected communities. This paper investigates how these films portray scientific and technological practices and expose mechanisms of ignorance production. Ultimately, we explore how scientific discourses and practices—both narratively and materially—can participate in forms of violence or, conversely, serve as instruments of critique, resistance, and collective memory-making.
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