Documentary as slow care infrastructure: afterlives of gun violence

Gun violence in the US is an endemic condition that structures everyday life, makes loss ordinary, and exposes the insufficiency of existing systems of care. Dominant media representations often detach firearm injury from these structural conditions. This article analyzes recent documentary projects on the afterlives of gun violence. Through critical discourse analysis, I show how documentary can function as slow care infrastructure. I identify four dimensions of this work: critical seeing and listening, trauma-informed protocols, institutional uptake of testimony, and temporal endurance with material effects. Across schools, hospitals, universities, and community organizations, they protect participants, circulate survivor knowledge, support clinical and educational practice, and help build spaces, tools, and relationships for care. Documentary’s value lies in how it reorganizes grief, survival, and accountability across institutions and over time.