The Affective Turn and the Symbolic Repair: The Case of the Yellow Stars

(Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Abstract: In traffic accidents the bodies of the victims are images of the tragic meaning of the episode. In front of his corporal disappearance of the victims of the sinister, two antagonistic images are inscribed in the urban landscape as a memory of what happened: the image of the vehicle protagonist of the incident that the media broadcast in the chronicle of the event; and the yellow star that relatives paint to indicate where the event happened. Thus the victims become absent presences in the places where the accident occurred. The concept of victimization has traditionally been analyzed in radical opposition to the agency: the passivity of the wound against the power of the ability to act. The objective of this work is to challenge this dichotomy — particularly under the how it is deployed within the framework of the theory of social action — through an analysis of the Yellow Stars as location of pain. This perspect forces us to reconsider, not only the category of testimony but also the impact that these symbolic manifestations have on the sphere public as images that make visible urban violence and the vulnerability of our existence as a social problem.

Key words: vial accident, agency, affective turn