The English writer and critic John Berger regarded the twentieth century as ‘the century of departure, of migration, of exodus, of disappearance: the century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon’.1 Berger’s characterisation of ‘helplessness’ invites us to consider not only how people were rendered liable to sudden and involuntary displacement, but also how those processes were represented at the time and subsequently. Global conflicts, revolutions and civil wars have played a major part in these processes of movement and loss, exposing combatants and non-combatants to personal risk. Civilians have frequently been the chief actors in the dramas of ‘departure’ and ‘disappearance’. Massive displacement has not necessarily entailed movement across state borders, although it is only relatively recently that policy-makers have taken into account the large numbers of internally displaced persons in different parts of the world....
Visions of Reality and Meaning in the Thought of John Berger