Abstract

In his article "Political Landscape (with Castle Ruins): A Pictorial Document of Identity Discourses in East Belgium", Oliver Zöllner uses Ralf Bohnsack's (2013) "documentary method" to analyze a PR picture taken from a brochure of a regional authority as a pictorial document that encapsulates underlying discourses of identity, or rather identities in the plural, within the German-speaking Community of eastern Belgium, one of the three linguistic Communities of the federally organized kingdom. The analyzed image of a young woman in front of a castle ruin captures the "habitus" of the relatively small population group, the article argues. This habitus draws on partly conflictual and unclear interpretations of the past and future of the German-speaking population on the one hand, and on the debate about 'belonging' and 'demarcation' in a borderland (where the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and France are in proximity), on the other. To paraphrase art historian Martin Warnke (1992), the analyzed photograph is an example of a political image that sets a stage, or landscape, for further scrutiny. The darkness of the past, which is embodied by the dark castle ruin in the background of the picture, is in stark contrast to the shiningly bright figure of the young woman in the foreground whose features of fertility symbolize a future for the German-speaking minority. The picture's combined narratives, complex as they are, may represent inroads for progressive perspectives of ethnic or regional identity committed to the "emancipatory principle of intercultural tolerance and cosmopolitan openness", which can be seen as the essence of 'Belgitude' (Sepp 2010: 22).