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Publications

2011
Body of Evidence: CSI, the Detective Genre, and the Posthuman Condition
Yaccobi-Gross, T., & Pinchevski, A. . (2011). Body of Evidence: CSI, the Detective Genre, and the Posthuman Condition. In M. Birnhack & Elkin Koren, N. (Eds.), Law and Information Technologies (pp. 415-474). Tel Aviv: Ramot - Tel Aviv University Press. [in Hebrew]. Retrieved from Publisher's Version
2010
Media Witnessing in Asymmetric Conflict
Ashuri, T., & Pinchevski, A. . (2010). Media Witnessing in Asymmetric Conflict. Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict , 3(2), 111-124. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper aims to demonstrate the relevance of media witnessing – the witnessing performed in, by, and through the media – in situations of asymmetric conflict. The expansion of media technologies has brought new opportunities for both individuals and organizations to bear witness to events and broadcast their reports to increasingly wider audiences. Practices of media witnessing have become crucial in situations of asymmetric conflict, where the battle for public opinion brings into play different resources than those utilized on conventional battlegrounds. We describe media witnessing as a field in which various forces, resources, and agents compete for recognition by media audiences. We provide a framework for analysis and apply it to two documentary films produced shortly after the clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian forces in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. We conclude with a discussion of the significance of media witnessing in the context of contemporary asymmetric conflicts.
Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial
Pinchevski, A., & Liebes, T. . (2010). Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial. Public Culture, 22(2), 265-291. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
This essay considers the role of the radio in the mediation of trauma during the 1961 Eichmann trial. It is argued that radio broadcasts from the courtroom occasioned a transformation in the status of Holocaust survivors in Israel, who had been previously seen as deeply traumatized, unable or unwilling to speak about their experiences. Taking to the airwaves facilitated a shift in the conditions by which survivors' testimonies could find public articulation. As such, the Eichmann trial provides a compelling case of the significance of media in transforming private traumas into a collective or cultural trauma.

Russian translation (2012) “Отчужденные голоса: радио и медиация травмы в процессе эйхмана.” Новое литературное обозрение 116: 4

2009
Crisis-Readiness and Media Witnessing
Frosh, P., & Pinchevski, A. . (2009). Crisis-Readiness and Media Witnessing. The Communication Review, 12(3), 295-304. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
Contemporary media saturation requires us to rethink the notion of crisis. This paper characterizes crisis not in terms of isolable moments and significant events, but as a generalized and routine background condition—a persistent crisis-readiness. It is sustained and performed by a new media configuration: an assemblage of mediation, representation and experience that we call “media witnessing.” Focusing on how media witnessing foregrounds the immanent decisiveness of everyday existence, the interconnectivity and unpredictability of mediated networks, and the mutual vulnerability of dispersed publics, the paper calls for an understanding of crisis as a perpetual condition of transformative possibility.
Why Media Witnessing? Why Now?
Frosh, P., & Pinchevski, A. . (2009). Why Media Witnessing? Why Now?. In P. Frosh & Pinchevski, A. (Eds.), Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (pp. 1-19). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from Publisher's Version
Witnessing as a Field
Ashuri, T., & Pinchevski, A. . (2009). Witnessing as a Field. In P. Frosh & Pinchevski, A. (Eds.), Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (pp. 133-157). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved from Publisher's Version
Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication
Frosh, P., & Pinchevski, A. (Eds.). (2009). Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan . Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract

Do mass media turn us all into witnesses, and what might this mean? From the Holocaust to 9/11, modern communications systems have incessantly exposed us to reports of far flung and often horrifying events, experienced by people whom we do not know personally, and mediated by a range of changing technologies. What is the truth status of such ‘media witnessing’, and how does it depend on journalists and media organizations? What are its social, cultural and political ramifications, and what kind of moral demands can it make of audiences to act on behalf of suffering strangers? What are its connections to historical forms of witnessing in other fields: legal, religious and scientific? And how is it tied to technological transformations in media, transformations that bridge distances in space and time and can make ordinary people the sources of extraordinary footage? These are the themes taken up within this unique volume, now available for the first time in paperback with a special preface written by Elihu Katz. Contributors include John Durham Peters, John Ellis, Günter Thomas, Tamar Liebes, Menahem Blondheim, Tamar Ashuri, Carrie Rentschler, Joan Leach, Roy Brand, and the editors, Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski. Together they not only make a crucial intervention in ongoing debates about media witnessing and the representation of strangers, but present original conceptualizations of the relationship between knowledge, discourse and technology in the era of mass communications. 

'Why are witnesses to salient socio-political events so important in our age of global media reporting? Testimonies are sometimes the only chance to arrive at more information which would, otherwise, have been swept under the carpet. This excellent book elaborates on, and challenges, the complex and difficult roles of eye witnesses and of the media in truly innovative interdisciplinary ways. Everybody who deals with media in their everyday lives will be able togain new insights.’ — Professor Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK

‘This is a most valuable collection of essays. Innovative, engrossing and rewarding, it provides an excellent exploration of media witnessing and isd efinitely to be recommended.’ — European Journal of Communication

 

2007
Eichmann on the Air: Radio and the Making of an Historic Trial
Pinchevski, A., Liebes, T., & Herman, O. . (2007). Eichmann on the Air: Radio and the Making of an Historic Trial. Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, 27(1), 1-26. Retrieved from Publisher's Version
Holocaust Perversions: The Stalags Pulp Fiction and the Eichmann Trial
Pinchevski, A., & Brand, R. . (2007). Holocaust Perversions: The Stalags Pulp Fiction and the Eichmann Trial. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(5), 387-407. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
The Stalags, an Israeli pulp fiction series whose advent coincided with the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, portrayed sadomasochistic scenarios between SS female guards and Allied soldiers in POW camps. Written in Hebrew by native Israelis, these cheap pocketbooks were enormously popular with Israeli teenagers, many of whom were children of Holocaust survivors. We posit the Stalags (a) as a fictional counterpart of the trial, complementing the legal procedure with feats of the imagination, and (b) as a text upon which the Israeli young generation negotiated issues of power and identity.

Hebrew translation in Zmanim, 112 (2010): 96-105. 

2006
In Praise of Silence: Freedom of Speech and the Responsibility for Alterity
Pinchevski, A., & Birnhack, M. . (2006). In Praise of Silence: Freedom of Speech and the Responsibility for Alterity. In M. Birnhack (Ed.) Be Quiet! Someone is Speaking: Freedom of Speech in Israel: Book Series in Law, Culture and Society (pp. 395-424). Tel Aviv: Ramot - Tel Aviv University Press. [in Hebrew]. Retrieved from https://law.tau.ac.il/sites/law.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/law_heb/Law_Society_Culture/books/sheket_medabrim/%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%AA%20%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%A6'%D7%91%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99.pdf Publisher's Version
2005
Displacing Incommunicability: Autism as an Epistemological Boundary
Pinchevski, A. . (2005). Displacing Incommunicability: Autism as an Epistemological Boundary. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies , 2(2), 163-184. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper examines perhaps the ultimate manifestation of a communicational boundary: autism. It explores how autism has become an object of knowledge in disciplines concerned with mental and social life and identifies modes of communicability and incommunicability that have been deployed in clinical, scientific and social research. Such polarized demarcation works to purify conceptual zones of communication from refractory elements and, hence, from alterity. The paper draws on speculations by Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas to suggest that, rather than marking the end of interactive potential, incommunicability is in fact internal to and constitutive of communicability.
By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication
Pinchevski, A. . (2005). By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press . Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
By Way of Interruption presents a radically different way of thinking about communication ethics. While modern communication thought has traditionally viewed successful communication as ethically favorable, Pinchevski proposes the contrary: that ethical communication does not ultimately lie in the successful completion of communication but rather in its interruption; that is, in instances where communication falls short, goes astray, or even fails. Such interruptions, however, do not mark the end of the relationship, but rather its very beginning, for within this interruption communication faces the challenge of alterity. Drawing mainly on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Pinchevski explores the status of alterity in prevalent communication theories and Levinas's philosophy of language and communication, especially his distinction between the Said and the Saying, and demonstrates the extent to which communication thought and practice have been preoccupied with the former while seeking to excommunicate the latter. With a strong interdisciplinary spirit, this book proposes an intellectual adventure of risk, uncertainty and the possibility of failure in thinking through the ethics of communication as experienced by an encounter with the other.
By way of Interruption Full Text
The Ethics of Interruption: Toward a Levinasian Philosophy of Communication
Pinchevski, A. . (2005). The Ethics of Interruption: Toward a Levinasian Philosophy of Communication. Social Semiotics, 15(2), 211-234. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
This essay attempts to mobilize some key concepts developed in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas into communication thought framework. The main argument is that Levinas's speculation on ethics as first philosophy provides an alternative perspective from which to view the relation between communication and ethics. At its core is the concept of interruption. It is suggested that ethical communication may lie in the interruption of communication—in instances where lateral exchange or concurrence between minds are troubled. Such interruptions, however, do not mark the end of concern for another, but rather its very beginning, for it is in such instances that communication faces the challenge of alterity. While bringing one to the verge of discursive possibilities, interruption gives rise to communication otherwise conceived, to exposure and vulnerability, and thereby to the possibility of responding to the Other.
2003
Ethics on the Line
Pinchevski, A. . (2003). Ethics on the Line. The Southern Communication Journal, 68(2), 152-166. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
This article explores the ethical dimensions of computer‐mediated communication held in chatrooms. The philosophical underpinnings refer to the work of Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, specifically to concepts relating to the ethics of Other‐oriented communication. The main argument is that this medium presents serious difficulty for Other‐oriented communication due to the potential for control over online interaction. This control is manifested in three ways: the ability to control online presence of Self and Other, the ability to manage exposure and vulnerability and thereby suspend surprise, and the means by which text‐based communication provides a sense of a separate‐space‐shared‐time. Based on this analysis, two tactics are suggested by which one might be able to resist control and allow for a more Other‐oriented interaction.
2002
Signifying Passages: The Signs of Change in Israeli Street Names
Pinchevski, A., & Torgovnik, E. . (2002). Signifying Passages: The Signs of Change in Israeli Street Names. Media Culture & Society , 24(3), 365-388. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract
Street names are mundane media through which the past is commemorated and introduced into the public sphere. Viewed from a semiotic perspective, street names constitute a spatial-text produced over time, capturing the political, social and cultural climates in which it is formed. In this article we propose an analysis of street names in four Israeli towns of different social, political and demographic backgrounds. The study is based on a two-stage analysis: an analysis of the local narratives and a hermeneutic reading of the street maps as spatial-texts. This is followed by a quantitative summary of street names according to categories. By studying practices of naming and renaming, and deciphering key elements in these spatial-texts, we conclude that street names reflect the changing character of the Israeli political, social and cultural orders. As such, they are indicative of shifts occurring in the social production of the Israeli collective memory.
2001
Freedom from Speech (or the Silent Demand)
Pinchevski, A. . (2001). Freedom from Speech (or the Silent Demand). Diacritics, 31(2), 70-84. Retrieved from Publisher's Version
Shoham, S. G., & Pinchevski, A. . (2001). The Medium is the Barrier. In J. Allwood & Dorritos, B. (Eds.), Papers in Anthropological Linguistics 27 (pp. 149-167). Göteborg: Department of Linguistics. Retrieved from Publisher's VersionAbstract

In this paper, we present a critical viewpoint of human dialogue in the modern age. In our view, the Internet, as the paramount cultural guidepost at the end of the millennium, is a stark reflection of the barrier in human communication in our time. By means of an analysis of conversation transcripts at virtual conversation sites, we shall endeavor to show that virtual communication, to use a phrase from Zen wisdom literature, is ‘the clap of one hand.’ The medium of the Internet does not permit authentic dialogue, which in our view is the key to creativity and culture; instead, it sells the illusion of communication. We shall make our claims on three levels. First, we shall analyze the virtual entity at the ontological level. We shall then go on to analyze conversations at virtual conversation sites. Finally, we shall adduce a number of social implications of the phenomenon under consideration.

Also available in Hebrew: Shoham, S.G., and Pinchevski, A. (1998). The Medium is the Barrier. Journal 77: Society Culture and Criticism, 221, 24-29.