This paper engages directly with the experiences of war victims. It seeks to examine the impact contemporary war has on the human capacity for symbolization. In order to provide insight into this question, the paper examines the imagery of contemporary war which war survivors and children of war survivors create. By interdisciplinary welding of psychoanalysis and anthropology, the paper demonstrates that contemporary war cannot be fully grasped and symbolically represented by its victims. Their experiences are recalled incoherently, and translate into schematic monochromic visual representations devoid of people and action.

The paper uses data collected through family and individual semi-structured interviews, participant observation and informed interpretation of drawings. In order to illustrate my arguments and allow the reader to translate them into other theoretical frameworks, I offer a drawing by an Afghan torture victim, a drawing by a child who fled the war in Syria and drawings by the children of war survivors from Bosnia and Herzegovina.