Lives rendered
invisible: Bearing witness to human suffering
Mladjo Ivanovic 1
Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University,
mivanovi@msu.edu
This paper explores the ethical challenges involved in
the ways public representation structures our
experiences of atrocities and facilitates an adequate
awareness of and response towards the suffering of
others. It points out that such an analysis should not
exhaust itself in answering what makes public
representations of human suffering ethically suspicious
and intolerable, but should rather extend this task by
clarifying how the public forms sentiments about their
social and political reality by elucidating under which
conditions public representation promotes broader
political agendas. One of the central tenets of human
rights advocacy is the widespread conviction that
exposure to images and stories of human rights abuse has
a mobilizing effect on western audience(s) whose
exposure to such knowledge can motivate them to
intervene and prevent future atrocities. In order to
assess the basic implications of such a conviction we
must answer at least three principal clusters of
questions. First, how do public representations of
atrocities affect individuals and their capacities to
conceive and respond to social injustices and the
suffering of others? Under what circumstances may agents
respond effectively to shocking content? Second, how do
social powers operate within the field of perception in
order to control how the viewing public is affected? And
how do these effects inform and galvanize political
support or opposition regarding concrete historical
events? Finally, what can be said about the
responsibilities of visual representation? Whose agency
is it that images inform, and what reforms are necessary
to make representations of suffering ethically effective
means to encourage better acknowledgment of individual
and collective responsibilities that would motivate the
public to meet its moral and political obligations? This
paper ultimately suggests that in order for politically
implicated images to have an immediate critical effect
on individuals and their agency, they need to cultivate
alternative modes of perception.
Keywords: ethics of representation, images of
atrocities, social responsibility, political obligations,
perception
Introduction
In
the aftermath of the atrocities of the Second World War,
Adorno warned that aestheticizing human suffering
reduces it to a state of banality. Referring to what he
calls the “barbarism” of the post-Holocaust culture,
Adorno doubts whether our familiar discursive practices
can serve as adequate mediums to represent and
understand these horrors:
The so-called
artistic rendering of the naked physical pain of
those who were beaten down with rifle butts
contains, however distantly, the possibility that
pleasure can be squeezed from it. The morality
that forbids art to forget this for a second
slides off into the abyss of its opposite. The
aesthetic stylist principle, and even the chorus’s
solemn prayer, make the unthinkable appear to have
had some meaning; it becomes transfigured,
something of its horror removed. By this alone an
injustice is done the victims (Adorno 2003: 252).
Although
Adorno’s characterization has been criticized by
some as excessive, his statement reveals an
important aspect of representing atrocity and its
ties to moral evaluation. To fail to acknowledge
how interpretative and symbolic representations of
atrocities may undermine the tragic depth of human
brutality is to overlook the complexities of the
human condition, which render guilt and public
witnessing into its opposite, namely, indifferent
spectatorship and apathy. Implicit in Adorno’s
critique of the depoliticization of the Holocaust
and subsequent aestheticization of violence is
perhaps a reminder of a much deeper problem that
plagues the relationship between aesthetics,
politics and ethics: How do we make sense of the
cruelty captured in images of tormented human
beings? What are the moral obligations aroused
through exposure to visual representation of
atrocities? How do stories of human suffering
mobilize our emotional capacity to understand, to
make us grieve, or even to forget and remain
indifferent? Perhaps Adorno, who was eager to
unmask this difficulty of subjects to reconcile
their experiences with events that have eclipsed
their conceptual grasp, bespeaks to an inherent
inability of public representation to retrace the
contours of atrocities in the form of a coherent
discourse.
However, Adorno’s initial realization of the
difficulties tied to the entanglement between
aesthetics and politics remains a bit ambiguous.
It seems to rest on two distinct, though related,
assumptions. First, it
suggests that there are various moral issues
involved in the nature of knowledge/information
that the visual depiction and documentation of
human suffering conveys. There seems to be a dark
dialectic within these instances of horror that
are contextualized in visual representation, and
despite the fact that photography’s broad
resonance has a capacity to succeed in arousing
public moral outrage and provoke questions of
responsibility, there also lies a danger of
effectuating what it seeks to resist, namely the
normalization of atrocity. Second ,
although representations of suffering seem to have
an instrumental value in capturing public
attention by accommodating viewers’ imagination
and emotion, such images nonetheless tell us
little about the nature of the political
deliberations that surround them. They don’t
reveal how their effects on viewers are being
channeled and transformed into a specific
political consciousness. If we take into
consideration that exhibiting such images reduces
complex geopolitical conditions to shocking but
simplistic visual frames, questions arise
concerning the political nature of such processes
and which instances of social powers create
conditions of perception that constitute subjects’
comprehension of the content that these images
deliver. As a result of this dilemma, the ways in
which public representation affects and shapes the
political and moral agency of individuals calls
for a closer examination of the patterns, problems
and inconsistencies associated with the use of
images of human suffering. It is commonplace to
claim that people make sense of events in the
world through the information that images convey;
however, in order to foster an active engagement
with reality there is a need to better chart the
processes through which certain depictions emerge
as critical landmarks of public knowledge and
imagination.
In what
follows, I take this troubling relation between
the invasive representation of human trauma and
the political nature of the public use of such
images as a convenient starting point for the
theme I wish to discuss in this paper, namely,
the ethical challenges involved in the ways
public representation—through photography or
other media—structures our experiences of
atrocities and facilitates an adequate awareness
and response (or a lack thereof) towards the
suffering of others. In order to understand
exactly what is at stake here, I point out that
such an analysis should not exhaust itself in
answering what makes public representations of
human suffering ethically suspicious and
intolerable, but should rather extend this task
by clarifying how the public forms sentiments
about their social and political reality by
elucidating under which conditions public
representation promotes broader political
agendas. One of the central tenets of human
rights advocacy is the widespread conviction
that exposure to images and stories of human
rights abuse has a mobilizing effect on western
audience(s) whose exposure to such knowledge can
motivate them to intervene and prevent future
atrocities. In some sense, this belief for the
most part also defines the relationship between
aesthetics and politics. In order to assess the
basic implications of such a conviction we must
answer at least three principal clusters of
questions. First,
how do public representations of atrocities
affect individuals and their capacities to
conceive and respond to social injustices and
the suffering of others? Under which
circumstances may agents respond effectively to
shocking content? What are the limits of
depicting violence and human trauma? There are
various issues involved in the visual depiction
and documentation of atrocities and suffering.
Although images can be powerful mediums that
force attention and involvement, their resonance
ultimately depends on where they are coming
from, who wants to see them, and political
contexts that support their interpretation.
Perceiving a photograph that depicts a certain
traumatic moment thus does not only imply an
active engagement with the ways one represents a
tragic event, but also implicates the viewer in
the helplessness and vulnerability of others.
Thus, such a perception may aestheticize the
suffering of others and thereby surrender the
image as spectacle, or it can politicize such
representations by thinning out the experience
of the spectators that may result in co-optable
and sterile populist agendas and selectivism. Second,
although the power of the image is built on
emotional response, the specific emotions an
image invokes are not predictable in themselves.
They depend on topologies of social powers and
the interests those powers aim to advance.
Hence, what essentially undergird these
relations are political processes that dictate
malformed public responsiveness to instances of
human suffering. Such distortions are evident,
for example, in western selectivism, which
handpicks certain cases of suffering to
represent and address. The question we must
ultimately confront, then, concerns the role of
society in facilitating a space wherein moral
dilemmas healthily correlate to the witnessing
of injustice and atrocities. How exactly do
social powers organize the field of public
perception? And how does this galvanize
political support or opposition to concrete
historical events? Finally,
what can be said about the responsibilities of
visual representation? Whose agency is it that
images inform, and what reforms are necessary to
make representations of suffering ethically
effective means to encourage better
acknowledgment of individual and collective
responsibilities that would motivate the public
to meet its moral and political obligations? For
this paper ultimately suggests that, in order
for politically implicated images to have an
immediate critical effect on individuals and
their agency, they need to cultivate alternative
modes of perception. Such modes, then, would
challenge persisting cognitive and perceptual
norms that sustain the lethargic consciousness
of an audience and help induce new modes of
subjectivity.
Images and the contemporary hollowness of
bearing witness
How
do images of human suffering affect us? How do
they mobilize our attention, and elicit empathy,
horror, enjoyment or anger? In spite of their
moral straightforwardness, these questions are
not easy to answer. Given that representations
of atrocities have not only epistemological, but
also ethical and political dimensions, the first
step in answering these questions is to analyze
how specific cultural, economic, and political
conditions facilitate images as vehicles for
collective knowledge and memory. Taking into
account that these different aspects intersect
and form the contexts in which public
representation defines the standards of our
social experiences, it is important to indicate
the ways in which the relation between images,
public knowledge, and individual agency (either
through direct action, omission, or apathetic
spectatorship) is constituted. In Regarding
the Pain of Others, now a
classic work on the uses and meanings of images
of atrocities, Susan Sontag illuminates this
complex relation between representations of
traumatic events and an audience whose
perception of violence or trauma is defined by
exposure to such images. “One can feel obliged
to look at photographs that record great
cruelties and crimes,” she writes, “to think
about what it means to look at them, about the
capacity actually to assimilate what they show.
Not all reactions to these pictures are under
the supervision of reason and conscience. Most
depictions of tormented, mutilated bodies do
arouse a prurient interest” (Sontag 2003: 95).
Despite recent calls for a reconsideration of
the validity of images of suffering as tools for
socially and politically engaged photojournalism
and art, there are many arguments that express
doubts about the moral and political sentiments
that gruesome or aesthetically appealing images
of trauma may stimulate through public exhibits.
On the one hand, photography can facilitate the
articulation of a certain degree of moral
indignation, responsibility, empathy, and
compassion, forced by the fact that viewers need
to decide where they stand in regard to the
content that they see. On the other hand, it can
generate more deleterious responses—voyeurism,
shame, guilt, complicity, and indifference. The
gravitation of their content towards the
subject’s imagination complicates both sets of
emotions, for one of the most typical responses
to images is an envisioned restriction of
political possibilities, which needs to be
contested critically.
When we
consider the ordinary ways in which we think
about our capacity to bear witness and
understand the complexities of human
conditions that result from states of
vulnerability and exclusion, it soon becomes
evident that how we conceive social reality
and human deprivation is configured through
the interpretative and symbolic dimensions of
visual representations and the discourses that
articulate them. As Barbie Zelizer has aptly
observed, “[t]he compelling weight of the
photograph, then, is determined by a linkage
between its material and discursive
dimensions, and the power created by that
linkage draws us to a photo’s many
meanings”(Zelizer 1998: 8). This alone
suggests that the multifaceted dimension of
images not only helps to stabilize and support
knowledge about specific events, but also
fosters an alternative engagement with reality
by guiding public imagination beyond the
contours of mere witnessing. The use of images
for political purposes relies on the
assumption that complicated events can become
visible and understandable through certain
kinds of depiction. The graphic content of an
image thus acts as a trigger for emotional
release, regardless of which emotions these
may be. And yet, most discourse regarding the
informative role of images merits the
assumption that seeing photos with gruesome
content would be enough to promote action or
responsiveness of some kind. The problem with
this assumption is not only that it
presupposes reactions in audience that are not
obvious, but also that such a reduction of the
political role, capacity and effect of an
image to naïve spectatorship is an ideological
distortion of a complex process of how images
work in today’s public sphere and the ways in
which they affect subjects.
It is
for these reasons that viewing photos of
human suffering is both active and
intervening, though these two aspects do not
necessarily presuppose or lead to collective
public action. As Jacques Rancière argues, “there is
no straightforward road from the fact of
looking at a spectacle to the fact of
understanding the state of the world; no
direct road from intellectual awareness to
political action” (Rancière
2009: 75). He associates the questionable
political value of photos with the lethargic
consciousness of the viewing public in order
to disclose the problematic complacency of
the postmodern subject in his long-overdue
awakening of knowledge and compassion
towards the suffering of others. As a
result, Rancière
suggests that although gruesome images are
certainly hard to bear, there is no reason
why their exhibition would make an audience
eager to fight against powers that cause
such harrowing conditions. “The stock
reaction to such images,” he writes, “is to
close one’s eyes or avert one’s gaze” (Rancière
2009: 85). Such a paradoxical situation,
which defines the link between the
intolerable content of an image to an
awareness of the reality it expresses, is
evidence of the need to challenge
theoretical and political presuppositions
that ground the public criticism that these
images want to inform. Spectators share
specific epistemic positions and they
experience the content of images through
their rootedness in contingent cultural,
economic and political conditions that mold
cognitive presuppositions that condition
their perceptions of their social
environments and the lives of others. Thus,
Rancière’s disturbing
analysis of the political value of images of
human suffering cannot be posed
independently of the question of the
political nature of the subject’s
comprehension and formation of his or her
identity. Exposure to public representation
of harrowing images is thus never a passive
encounter with concrete historical events.
Rather, visual content that is transmitted
through images falls down on the backdrop of
previous shared knowledge—both cultural and
political. While such an encounter overlaps
to a certain degree with previous
experiences of similar events, and may even
invoke sentimentality towards victims, the
audience nonetheless preserves its own
distinct perspective and interpretative
framework, to which one has to pay attention
if we are to remain critical about
transmitted knowledge and how it may
mobilize (or fail to mobilize) public
attention/intervention.
As we live in a time in which acts of
witnessing risk becoming distorted by
various social forces that facilitate
uncritical understandings of and responses
to tragic events, we find ourselves
challenged to apprehend the weight of
knowledge that is facilitated through
screened material. At the same time,
displayed images offer a representational
frame of human brutality and facilitate
exposure and engagement more then
understanding. Their reliance on effect
and emotion become powerful impulses for
judging such events in the public sphere.
However, they are instrumentalized as
effective ways to reproduce reality and
shape popular imagination of atrocities,
which not only enhances an acknowledgment
of public responsibility regarding
instances of human suffering, but also
triggers “cognitive resistances” that may
obscure or even make incomprehensible
events that demand public attention. The
capacity to presume, infer, and accept or
reject meanings of images depends also on
other, more symbolic forces that play an
active role in diminishing individual
capacity to become ethically responsive to
the suffering of others. Racism, sexism,
religious conservatism, national or
cultural identities, and class-based
stereotypes make witnessing a selective
process, one that reduces complex events
to a manageable size or allows us to
employ our references to present-day
political agendas. Referring to this
selectivism, James Dawes suggests that
exposure to systematic injustices and
violence “triggers so many cognitive
resistances, because its disorganization
makes it so difficult to pack it into the
standard narrative forms we use parceling
knowledge of our worlds, we can be
inclined to retreat into easy, familiar
methods of regulative experience. For
many, racism [or any other aspect of our
habituation] can therefore begin to
function as an almost indispensable
enabling device, a useful and
well-practiced response for psychically
organizing the unorganizable” (Dawes 2007:
35). Such a radical contingency of
reception, then, not only challenges how
public representations of distant
suffering can contribute to an
acknowledgment of individual and
collective responsibilities when
confronted with human rights violations,
but raises crucial questions about other
possible responses to viewing and reading
about violence and human suffering in
general.
Despite continual references to
atrocities in the media, there is a
range of reasons for why such
representations may no longer compel
responsibility or move individuals and
collectives to intervene. For instance,
it is possible that, rather than
motivating an audience to action, media
coverage shocks and desensitizes it into
a dazed passivity and denial of
responsibility. As Stanley Cohen writes
in his classic work on this theme:
Witnessing
and reproducing the truth are
cognitive projects: how to convey a
reality that cannot be denied. But
what if continued exposure to this
reality eventually deadens our moral
and emotional receptivity to further
images of suffering? The populist
psychology thesis of “compassion
fatigue” is built upon three
overlapping concepts: information
overload,
normalization, desensitization
(Cohen 2001: 187).
In other
words, although we find ourselves
relying increasingly on the media
and its visual depictions to help us
make sense of atrocities, with time
the barrage of horrifying photos
loses its resonance. This
deterioration takes place not only
because such images may overwhelm
the audience with the magnitude of
suffering, but also because constant
exposure to human deprivation and an
ongoing politicization of tragic
historical events (e.g. the
Holocaust) normalizes them, and
numbs the western audience to
recurring instances of human
suffering. What “compassion fatigue”
teaches us, then, is that
indifference to the pain of others
is not so incomprehensible after
all; it relies on multifaceted
political performances in which
cultural predilection, together with
public representation, lead towards
the humanization or dehumanization
of the Other. As public knowledge
becomes increasingly dependent on
technology and political mediation,
the power of images to effectively
generate public awareness and
support of agonies of distant others
is underscored by their capacity to
end in the opposite: cultural denial
and further hindrance of recognition
and redress. Thus, rather than
inducing compassion and sympathy,
they may result in resentment and
indifference. Even worse, as images
of atrocities become more complex
and “multimediated,” their
open-ended interpretative and
symbolic dimensions may turn
audiences into voyeurs of
objectified human suffering in an
almost pornographic way.
This brings us back to Rancière’s
question of the nature of the
relationship between visual
representation and the effects
this has on the formation of
public opinion. How does such
exposure shape a subject’s
capacity to comprehend his or her
environment and the environment of
others? “Why identify gaze and
passivity,” he writes, “unless on
the presupposition that to view
means to take pleasure in images
and appearances while ignoring the
truth behind the image and the
reality outside the theatre” (Rancière
2009: 12). Interrogating the
efforts of critical art to
emancipate the spectator questions
the attempt to traverse the abyss
that divides activity from
passivity by asking “if it is not
precisely desire to abolish the
distance that creates it” (Rancière
2009: 12). Taking into account
that the mass media has an
uncontested monopoly on the
dissemination of information, the
dependency of subjects’ knowledge
on broadcasting, which
necessitates a constant referral
to technological mediation in the
formation of experience and
meaning, may cause not only a
complete denial of recognition
towards culturally distant values,
but also lead further to the
preservation of cultural and
political stereotypes that often
have fatal consequences for the
acknowledgment of our own
humanitarian/political obligations
towards distant people in need. As
these theorists remind us, “we
have only got better more subtly
in looking the other way.” This
ignorance is not a natural
process; it instead depends on the
linkage between individual moral
choices and the political powers
that form and regulate them. A
better understanding of these
complex connections will help not
only to uncover the network of
intentions that guides injustices
and clarify the unevenly shared
responsibilities of those who
cause these events (as well as
those who witness or benefit from
them), but also to collapse the
distance between “us” and “them”
and acknowledge how precarious
human life is.
Social Ontologies and
Politics of Perception
The
previous pages suggest
that there is no simple
relationship between
continual references to
atrocities and public
responses to the
knowledge that such
references convey.
Despite the various ways
in which representations
of violence and other
human rights abuses can
affect an audience, the
capacity to presume,
accept or reject meaning
from images is built
into the image-making
enterprise. Such ability
to craft meaning
regardless of an image’s
clear relevance to what
is being depicted
deserves further
attention. Contrary to
the popular assumption
that “images are worth a
thousand words,” they
actually tell us very
little. Sometimes they
exclude information that
would otherwise be
important in order to
have adequate knowledge
about a specific event.
Thus, by leaving out
cues of causality,
impact, and historical
contexts, and without a
clear distinction
between intention,
neglect, accident or
design that guides these
events, images offer an
atrophied depiction of
reality. Their
provocative and shocking
content invites public
engagement with human
suffering without
actually insisting that
people comprehend
tragedy on its own
terms. In obscuring its
complex historical,
cultural and political
aspects, public
representation of
atrocities usually
offers a blended visual
category of human-made
and natural catastrophes
that prevents reasoned
deliberation and denies
insight into the complex
reality of injustice and
tragedies. In this
regard, although images
of suffering mobilize an
emotional landscape
within which public
reaction can take shape,
this landscape is
neither random nor
spontaneous. One has to
be sensitive to how and
what kind of context is
woven around the image,
because it is exactly
this context that gives
an image its meaning and
dictates its reception.
In other words, the
complex relations that
surround a given moment
captured through the
camera lens—whether
social, cultural, legal,
moral or political in
nature—determine what
the image is worth, as
well as the nature of
public exposure and
engagement. Resolving
how to display specific
events and determining
what kind of information
is needed to recognize
them in a certain way is
in the interest of
social forces that want
to advance and protect
specific agendas.
We
have all grown
accustomed to familiar
representations of
atrocities and we seem
to ignore the fact that
an image’s contingent
nature can be utilized
by institutional powers
by manipulating the
cognitive and emotional
dispositions of the
viewing public. As Susan
Sontag argues,
(P)hotographs that everyone recognizes are now a
constituent part
of what society
chooses to think
about, or declares
that it has chosen
to think about. It
calls these ideas
‘memories’ and
that is, over the
long run, a
fiction. Strictly
speaking, there is
no such thing as a
collective
memory—part of the
same family of
spurious notions
as collective
guilt. But there
is collective
instruction
(Sontag 2003: 85).
This gives an image a strategic use value, and
renders it an
intrinsic
component of what
Judith Butler
terms a “frame” or
“field of
perception.” Used
equally to
generate
compassion and
indifference, to
accuse, distance,
criticize,
empathize,
ridicule,
manipulate,
obscure, deny,
neutralize, and
dissociate, images
thus do capture
public
involvement, but
in strategic, and
often deceiving
ways. The public’s
capacity to make
meaning out of
these images
therefore hinges
on a nurturing of
the imagination on
the basis of
social and
political norms.
To the extent that
every society is
defined by values
and institutions
that presuppose a
capacity that
enables social
actors to
influence the
decisions of
others, it is
important to keep
in mind the ways
in which media
outlets set up the
contexts in which
the interpretative
and symbolic
dimensions of an
image form and
guide individual
knowledge and
action. Drawing on
both Foucault and
Sontag, Butler’s
account in
“Torture and the
ethics of
photography”, and
later in her book
“Frames of War,”
expands the
discourse on
images by
analyzing the ways
in which
atrocities and
human suffering
are presented to
us, and more
generally, how
such presentations
and public
responses are
effects of social
processes of
subjection that
operate through
visual and
discursive fields.
As she puts it:
Prior
to the events
and actions
that are
represented…
there is an
active, if
unmarked,
delimitation
of the field
itself, and so
a set of
contents and
perspectives
that are not
shown, never
shown,
impermissible
to show. They
constitute the
nonthematized
background of
what is
represented,
one that can
only be
approached
through
thematizing
the
delimitating
function
itself, one
that allows
for an
exposure of
the forcible
dramaturgy of
the state and
the
collaboration
with it by
those who
deliver the
visual news of
the war
through
complying with
permissible
perspectives.
That
delimitation
is part of an
operation of
power that
does not
appear as a
figure of
oppression
(Butler 2007:
953).
Butler’s
claim
brilliantly
captures the
ways in which
social forces
constitute
human agency
and enable
specific
regimes of
intelligibility.
Being a
spectator/bearing
witness, then,
becomes a
complex
process
wherein
exposure to
visual
representation
invokes not
only an aspect
of reality but
positions such
representation
into a broader
interpretative
framework that
actively molds
the context of
photography
through social
and political
norms and
practices.
Since images
are
experienced as
ways of giving
meaning to our
social
environment,
the ethical
resonance of
such processes
depends on
interpretative
cultural and
political
codes of
reference,
which makes
questionable
the separation
of
representation
from ongoing
political
agendas.
Indeed,
photographs
serve as
evidence of
atrocities,
but such
pieces of
evidence “are
themselves a
species of
rhetoric. They
reiterate.
They simplify.
They agitate.
They create
illusion of
consensus”
(Sontag 2003:
6). One can
assume, then,
that there
lies a
constant
danger that
knowledge
mediated
through images
becomes a
vehicle of
ideology under
the guise of
representation,
rather than
that which
references
events that
deserve
genuine public
concern and
immediate
action.
In
order to fully
grasp the weight
of Sontag’s and
Butler’s
insights, one
has to disclose
how social
ontologies work,
that is, when
and how one can
claim a certain
identity, and
under which
circumstances
one can be
visible as a
human being
worthy of moral
concern. In the
first instance,
social ontology
seems to be
constituted
within certain
fields of
intelligibility,
fields that
bring us back to
questions about
power, and how
relations of
power both
sustain the
subject’s
identity and
subordinate her
at the same
time. Thus, as
Butler argues,
“there’s always
question prior
to ontology,
which is the
question of
power and what
it orchestrates:
who or what can
be, has the
power to be, and
what allows
someone or
something to
emerge into the
field of
ontology?”
(Butler 2011:
86). In other
words, we must
ask, which
conditions allow
someone or
something to
emerge and
become socially
visible; which
operations of
these social
powers decide in
advance who will
and who will not
become a
subject? If we
start with the
assumption that
the individual
is dependent on
social
recognition, and
that his or her
identity is
constituted
through cultural
and political
forces along
with and in
opposition to
others, the
failure to be
recognized as a
subject worthy
of social
concern, then,
is not just a
failure of civil
society to
successfully
mediate between
individuals and
political
powers. More
fundamentally,
it is the
impossibility of
separating the
intelligibility
of social actors
from the social
forces that both
individualize
and totalize a
particular
presentation of
oneself. Thus,
in terms of the
ability of a
social body to
provide content
for the
realization of
humanization
(and
dehumanization),
disciplinary
discourses
alongside
regimes of
perception
signify the
totality of
meanings that
make any
differentiation
between social
role and
personal
autonomy
impossible. Such
an increasing
control of
society over
individuals
results in
diverse modes of
behavior that
are accompanied
by the reduction
of a subject’s
capacity to
withstand
specific
cognitive and
material
dispositions
which in turn
create and
sustain our
response towards
the suffering of
others. 2
Butler’s
gestures
towards the
comprehension
of public
imagery and
politics of
perception are
helpful to
reflect on the
ways in which
visual
documentation
of
geopolitical
events renders
certain human
beings
invisible. As
I suggested
earlier,
organization
of the sensory
landscape,
that is,
organization
of how
subjects
perceive their
environment,
is not
independent
from the
social
relations that
form and shape
their
sensory/perceptive/cognitive
capacities.
The
invisibility
of others,
then, is not
only
constituted
through the
exclusion of
certain social
sectors that
takes the form
of widespread
instances of
disrespect
(racial
minorities,
women, the
LGBTQ
community,
immigrants,
ethnic and
religious
minorities,
etc.). Rather,
their gradual
dehumanization
also depends
on sensory
inequality,
where both
aspects of
social
experience
share the same
ideological
foundations of
a single
political
process. Thus,
in order to
even initiate
discourse on
the political
effects of
visual
imagery, one
must disclose
how a
subject’s
perception is
formed and
sustained by
social forces
and the
relations that
they create.
This is
necessary
because a
subject’s
cognitive and
perceptive
capacities
determine when
and how
interpretations
of visual
content take
place and
which effects
it will have
on a subject’s
agency and
deliberation.
This way of
understanding
how experience
is constituted
and sustained
brings us back
to what
motivates
Butler’s
account of
ideological
framing.
Namely, many
social and
political
mechanisms
draw their
validity and
persuasiveness
from symbolic
cultural
forces that
are inherent
in social
upbringing,
which in
return strike
agents as
credible and
usually beyond
critical
reasoning.
Through a
complex setup
of
representations
(media, the
Internet,
public
campaigns) the
embodiment of
these forces
in public
broadcasts are
references not
just to social
constellations
and events
that unfold on
a political
landscape, but
also to a
situated
practice of
opportunities,
performance
and control.
Although it
may at first
seem rather
unattainable,
the reality
which comes
into being
through news
agencies and
other forms of
public media
transcends
questions of
mediation and
transmission,
and takes an
active role in
shaping public
knowledge and
what subjects
can conceive
as social
reality. Thus,
it remains a
constant
danger that
those subjects
whose behavior
media exposure
aims to affect
remain
vulnerable to
the forces of
predominant
political and
cultural
narratives
that
cognitively
and
emotionally
structure
individuals
according to
particular,
institutionally
driven social
contexts.
One
way to grasp
this process
is to ask the
simple
question of
what makes
some images
work better
than others,
and what
happens with
public
sentiments
towards those
lives that are
rendered
invisible. The
main challenge
here consists
in analyzing
the ways in
which such
invisibility
results from
cognitive,
emotional and
moral
reductions
facilitated
through
complex
mechanisms of
visual and
discursive
framing.3
We might,
along these
lines, think
that within
the frame, the
context of
social
relations
postulates the
possibility of
political
agents to be
present,
represented
and
representable
or in turn
completely
denied any
social
intelligibility
and
recognition.
Thus, the
symbolic and
structural
dimensions of
power
condition
subjects who
are socially
visible and
recognized as
individuals
with intrinsic
worth and
meaning from
those who are
not. There are
a variety of
ways to
account for
such an
emergence of
the “subject”
from the
matrix of
social
institutions,
and such
processes
raise
important
questions
about
individual
agency, moral
responsibility
and the
structures of
institutional
intelligibility.
Who appears
within the
frame? Who is
recognized and
what
constitutes a
subject who
can be
recognized in
the first
place? In an
attempt to
address this
problem,
Butler makes a
considerable
effort to
display how
such processes
of social
framing
orchestrate
subject
formation. As
she puts it,
If
recognition
characterizes
an act or a
practice or
even a scene
between
subjects, then
‘recognizability’
characterizes
the more
general
conditions
that prepare
or shape a
subject for
recognition—the
general terms,
conventions,
and norms
‘act’ in their
own way,
crafting a
living being
into a
recognizable
subject,
though not
without
errancy or,
indeed,
unanticipated
results. These
categories,
conventions,
and norms that
prepare or
establish a
subject for
recognition
[…] precede
and make
possible the
act of
recognition
itself. In
this sense,
recognizability
precedes
recognition
(Butler 2010:
5).
A close
reading of
these lines
shows us how
political
forces,
cultural
standards and
habits, forms
of knowledge,
procedures,
spatial
organizations
and systems of
monitoring
have become
the means for
governing the
unwanted.
These
categories and
norms in
collusion with
media and
other forms of
representation
become a field
of negotiation
that
orchestrates
the possible
forms a
subject may
take. By
introducing
the notion of
“frame,” a
notion that
refers to
intertwining
epistemological
and
ontological
horizons
within which
subjects come
to be
at all, Butler
provides a
fascinating
testimony of
the effects of
political
powers upon
which a
certain
understanding
of humanity
projects
itself. Such
an ontological
predisposition
of
epistemological
intelligibility
transforms
the social
space into a
performative
one wherein
the
intersection
of visual
control and an
ethical
preselection
creates the
conditions for
the inclusion
and exclusion
of human
beings.
The Public
Beyond
Witnessing:
Towards a
Different
Politics of
the Sensible
Throughout
this
paper I have
argued that
images of
human
suffering have
critically
shaped our
understanding
of tragedies
that result
from human
rights abuses.
I have tried
to show how
exposure to
evidence of
atrocities can
affect an
audience in
different
ways, and that
the act of
bearing
witness should
not be
understood
naively as a
one-dimensional,
individual
experience,
but rather as
a political
process that
uses images
and other
media to
sustain or
advance
specific
political
interests. I
have also
argued that,
even if we
become aware
of how such
processes
affect us, the
real challenge
lies much
deeper, namely
in revealing
how our
subjectivity
and agency are
constituted
through the
effects of
social forces
that condition
our capacity
to perceive
and
understand.
The main
challenge that
contemporary
human rights
advocates
face, then, is
posed not only
by the
controversial
moral and
political
implications
of the
gruesome
content of
images, but
also the
ideological
nature of
processes
woven within
the images’
use, reception
and intentions
that such
exposure seeks
to achieve. As
I have
suggested,
public
representations
of atrocities
may not only
result in a
fostering of
humanitarian
impulses; they
may also numb
public
criticism and
render agents
unable to
experience the
world and
other human
beings in an
engaged and
caring way.
The moral
anxiety
derived from
witnessing
distant
suffering also
brings us to
another
dilemma,
namely, how we
should
understand
this decay of
human
experience and
whether there
are ways to
overcome the
problem.
Given
that patterns
of exclusion
feed on
cross-cultural
and historical
contingencies,
one can repeat
Susan Sontag’s
concern that
“our failure
is one of
imagination”
(Sontag 2003:
8), and that
the first step
in overcoming
the passivity
of the viewing
public may be
to distance
ourselves from
the
historical,
cultural and
economic
structures
that affect
us. This
echoes what Rancière writes in regard to an
increasingly
deceptive
relation
between
ideology and
social
critique:
Forty
years ago,
critical
science made
us laugh at
the imbeciles
who took
images for
realities and
let themselves
be seduced by
their hidden
messages. In
the interim
the
“imbeciles”
have been
educated in
the art of
recognizing
the reality
behind
appearances
and the
messages
concealed in
images. And
now, naturally
enough,
recycled
critical
science makes
us smile at
the imbeciles
who still
think such
things, as
concealed
messages in
images and a
reality
distinct from
appearances
exist. The
machine can
work in this
way until the
end of time,
capitalizing
on the
impotence of
the critique
that unveils
the impotence
of the
imbeciles (Rancière 2009: 48).
However
much one might
take issue
with Rancière’s
claim, it is
at least clear
that the
different ways
in which
social forces
condition
specific
segments of an
individual’s
experiences
and
subsequently
his or her
identity,
leave the
question
unanswered as
to how we may
avoid this
trap of what
we might call
perceptual
predeterminism,
and actually
regain the
capacity of
critical
reflection.
The
aim of this
final section,
then, is not
to repeat the
criticism. I
am not
interested in
prolonging the
trial to which
discourse on
the political
nature of
images seems
to be reduced.
“If we want to
have a fresh
look at what
images are,
what they do
and the
effects they
generate” (Rancière 2011: 95), disclosing what social
powers frame
as standards
of
intelligibility
is just a
first step
toward
emancipation.
At stake here
is not only a
questioning of
the privilege
of the visual
or an
inevitable
surrender to
the
inescapable
nature of
power, but
also the hope
of finding new
paths to
disturb the
common ways in
which
perception is
predisposed.
In order to
contest
discursive
visual norms
that form a
dominant
system of
experience and
knowledge, an
image needs to
transcend, and
at the same
time remain
part of,
social
experience. In
other words,
if aesthetic
experience
aims to have a
critical
effect on
political
conditions, it
must disrupt
the ways in
which visual
depictions of
reality adhere
to certain
standards and
functions. As
Rancière
writes, “The
point is not
to
counter-pose
reality to its
appearances.
It is to
construct
different
realities,
different
forms of
common sense.”
To contest
mechanisms of
domination and
dehumanization,
images, then,
need to “help
sketch new
configurations
of what can be
seen, what can
be said and
what can be
thought and,
consequently,
a new
landscape of
the possible.
But they do so
on condition
that their
meaning or
effect is not
anticipated” (Rancière 2011: 103).
Only then can
the
“intolerable”
in images
really be
taken as a
serious medium
of
representation
of human
suffering, and
not simply as
a walk on a
tightrope
between
victims and
perpetrators
viewed at a
safe moral
distance
within the
comfort of the
western living
room. To
unsettle the
framing of a
visual culture
that blurs the
line between
complicity and
witnessing, as
well as foster
a “renewed
confidence” in
their
political
capacity,
images must
overcome the
ideological
veil of our
existence by
challenging
what we are
willing to
know and how
we react. They
must prompt a
refusal to
ignore the
political
nature and
implications
of our numb
spectatorship.
In
the end,
however
plausible the
previous
insights may
be, one can
still argue
that we are
confronted
with the
difficult task
of
articulating
the practical
aspects of the
obligations
they entail.
The initial
worry of how
to prompt
audiences to
adopt a more
active,
engaged
political role
when exposed
to evidence of
atrocities,
brings us back
to the
starting
question of
this paper,
namely, how to
overcome
increasing
social
indifference
towards the
suffering of
others and
acknowledge
responsibilities
that
representations/existence
of such
conditions
invoke. The
difficulty
here, then, is
to recognize
that, despite
the moral
disposition
that such
representations
may produce,
there still
are no
guarantees
that such
exposures
would compel
individuals to
fulfill their
obligations
towards people
in need.
Although
resolving the
problem of
motivation is
not an
explicit aim
of this paper,
I would like
to conclude
with a few
brief
suggestions of
how
representations
of suffering
may be made
ethically
effective
means for
better
acknowledgment
of individual
and collective
responsibility.
If
Rancière and
Butler’s
critique of
standards of
public
representation
poses the
challenge of
how to
theorize the
relationship
between the
political
usage of
images of
atrocities and
the formation
of public
sentiment
about such
events, their
account of the
situatedness
of agency
within
interpretative
frames only
gestures
towards
possible sites
of resistance.
If we take
such social
and political
structures as
epistemological
and
ontological
sites of
subject
formation, it
remains
unclear what
direction a
transformation
of such agency
should take
and which
normative
implications
should guide
such
processes.
What we need
here, then, is
to take this
moral residue
that remains
after we
confront
images of
human agony
and give the
encounter a
concrete
political
form.
Acknowledging
the tension
between public
representations
of human
suffering and
the
obligations
that these
representations
place on
spectators
compounds the
difficulties
of formulating
an ethics of
responsibility.
We must
require not
only an
historically
and
institutionally
specific
reading of
contemporary
geopolitical
conditions
that result in
human
suffering, but
also a
detachment of
depicted
events from
their concrete
political
contexts in
which the
problematic
interpretations
of these
events take
place. Despite
all the
admirable
efforts to
disclose
mechanisms
that prevent
individual or
collective
acknowledgment
of
responsibilities
aroused by
evidence of
human rights
abuses, we
still need a
more careful
vocabulary to
distinguish
between the
conditions
that result in
human
suffering, the
conditions
that frame its
appearance,
and the
normative
implications
that such
encounters
demand from
the viewing
public.
Without an
account of how
we may
recognize the
immediate
humanitarian
appeal that
our privileged
position as
spectators
carries within
it, there will
be no real
grounds for
political
engagement
after
witnessing
such
intolerable
instances of
human
deprivation.
The
pressing
question,
then, concerns
what changes
in our social
setup are
necessary in
order to
foster
solidarity
among people,
even if we
take into
account a lack
of commonality
and complex
geopolitical
contexts that
make some
people more
vulnerable to
suffering than
others. One
way to address
this issue is
to conceive
that
the lives
whose
horrifying
conditions we
experience
through visual
representation
of human
suffering are
already
soliciting us
both ethically
and
politically.
Our visual
apprehension
of such
imagery is an
occasion in
which implicit
consent or
dissent
(engagement or
apathy) to
injustice and
violence done
to these
people already
formulates a
social and
ethical
relation. If
we take more
seriously the
complexity of
this
interconnection
between
spectator and
victim we are
compelled to
extend our
understanding
of
responsibility
by indicating
the privilege
that
spectators
have, and what
kind of
obligations
this privilege
invokes. What
most
contemporary
strategies of
political
activism seem
to be lacking
in the context
of this
relation
between
spectators and
representations
of atrocities
is the insight
that the moral
appeal of
human beings
portrayed in
their
vulnerability
is already
part of the
image. Put
another way,
moral
implications
towards the
agonizing
other are
already part
of the scene
that we
appropriate
either as
subjects who
make such
images or as
those who only
observe them.
More
importantly,
there is a
radical
opposition
between two
kinds of
perspectives
that such
images invoke.
Both a
spectator and
photographer
are in the
privileged
position with
regard to the
events that
unfold in
these images.
This is not
only because
the events
that these
images depict
are delivered
over to public
interpretation,
but also
because this
asserted
asymmetry is
manifested in
another, more
radical,
sense: both
spectator and
the image
always
“survive”
indifference
to victims
exhibited
through the
latter.
I
assume that a
more nuanced
account of
this epistemic
and
ontological
privilege is
necessary if
we want to
engage
concretely
with the
particular
events that
images
exhibit.
Taking into
account that
we are
inevitably
situated in a
globalized
world, we are
called by the
other to take
a stand
regarding
events of
human
suffering.
There is an
ethical moment
in this
relationship
between
spectators and
victims that
we cannot
completely
deny, and its
moral charge
is grounded in
the fact that
we are always
already
involved in
representational
systems that
place us in a
hierarchical
relationship
to the persons
affected by
violent
events.
Therefore, it
is not only
necessary to
interrogate
the subjects
whom are
recruited as
vessels of
social powers
and the
“knowledge”
that such
powers want to
convey: we
must also show
how the
victims of
these horrors
are
constituted by
the same
political
subjectivity.
If we want to
affirm the
political use
of photography
as a form of
political
activism that
prompts public
attention, one
has to go
beyond the
cultural,
psychological,
and political
aspects of its
appearance and
recuperate its
moral
implications.
The outcome of
this is
profound, for
if we attend
to the
asymmetries
inherent in
representations
of suffering,
we would be
confronted
with the need
to revise some
of our most
basic
presuppositions.
These
presuppositions
concern not
only our own
political
culture, but
also in
general what
is meant when
we conceive of
humans or
humanity.
Thus, an
ethics of
responsibility
begins with
the
acknowledgement
that
representations
of others bear
political and
moral
connotations,
and that our
reaction (or
lack of
reaction)
towards the
horrors
depicted
carries an
inevitable
risk that the
choice we have
made through
our actions or
disregard
already
constitutes a
political
stance that
bears on moral
evaluation. An
image never
stands alone,
and once we
come to terms
with the
inevitability
of
representation,
both in terms
of our own
experience and
the people
mediated
through them,
then we must
(and I suppose
that “the
must” here is
the ethical
moment)
confront the
following
questions: how
are we shaping
others through
those
representations?
Are we
reinforcing
the injustice
done to them
through our
indifference
and lack of
commitment?
What kinds of
responsibilities
are invoked?
Do they go
beyond our
capacity to
evaluate,
articulate and
engage with
their sites of
emergence?
For
now, the
problems
persist. Maybe
the lesson to
be learned
here is simply
not to give up
in the face of
despair, to
not remain
blind to the
lives that our
inaction
otherwise
renders
invisible.
As Butler puts
it, “(t)he
precarity of
life imposes
an obligation
upon us. We
have to ask
about the
conditions
under which it
becomes
possible to
apprehend a
life or set of
lives as
precarious,
and those that
make it less
possible, or
indeed
impossible”
(Butler 2010:
2). We must
acknowledge,
then, that
human
suffering is
not just due
to a chronic
lack of reason
and deviation
from universal
ethical norms.
It is a
complex social
process within
which subjects
lose their
ability to
critically
apprehend
social
maladies and
identify their
own complicity
in sustaining
the system.
Ultimately,
behind the
façade of
quasi-emphatic
responses and
presentations
in media, and
alongside the
interplay of
apologetics
and
condemnations,
there lies a
core of numb
blindness.
This blindness
deepens the
gap between
the capacity
to see and to
feel, and
hence turns
human
witnessing
into an
imprecise
anthropomorphic
figure, a
fictive
boundary for
the outlets
created and
consumed by
the political
public
machine.
Becoming aware
of this
relationship
between
representation,
individual
experience and
social
conditions
will keep the
embodied
character of
human
deprivation
from being
ignored and/or
made more
palatable for
collective
reception. I
am aware that
this call to
resist is
neither new,
nor without
its
challenges,
but I also
believe that
it has the
potential to
call attention
to subjects’
positions in a
web of
historical and
social
conditions,
and may
contribute to
their
understanding
of how
interconnected
and morally
sensitive our
world actually
is.
|