UC Berkeley

My dissertation, The construction of the Colombian territory: Images of the Colombian Armed Conflict 2002-2010, critically analyzes the Colombian internal conflict and its relationship with the narrative of the nation in a global theater of operations of war in its different forms of visualization. Through a detail textual analysis of documentaries, films, recorded military operations, media military operations, and proof of life videos, I examine the effect moving images have had as part of configuring the battlefield. My research proceeds from the premise that there is a visual culture of warfare - grammars, imaginaries, and technologies – that has organized the global space of security and has brought new forms of territory that paradoxically exceed the idea of the sovereign nation and at the same time confirm it. In other words, I examine the creation and exercise of national security in a globalized world and its effects on the concept of the nation and national territory through the concept of politics of the visual. Colombia is considered a successful example for nation building, counterinsurgency tactics and U.S. intervention. As my case of study, I analyze the epistemological assumptions that emerge in the global war on terror, specifically how they reflect in the construction of the idea of Colombia as a unified image, one sovereign nation, and one territory through the production of different visual narratives.