The Visual Culture Surrounding Violence, War, & Terror

WARNING: Some visuals used on this blog may be unsettling. All blogposts are related to readings from Donatella Della Ratta's CMS/PL 348 class at John Cabot University.

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(UPDATE) Welcome to My Page: An Introduction

Hello,

I am a political science graduate (2023) with minors in communications & creative writing. 

The original purpose of this blog was to write weekly reflections for the readings from my CMS/PL class. I have since started editing these posts, refining and adding in new concepts and theories relevant to the readings. Each revised post will be labeled EDITED. The class was a communications class with a focus on analyzing visual media and its application to war, terrorism, and violence. 

Please feel free to comment your own opinions on the readings, as I will be posting the links to them on the blog. 

This blog is for studious and academic purposes. Please be tolerant of other’s comments and/or questions.

Thank you.

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The Message in the Image: Images of War and The Narratives Being Presented to the Audience

In the paper titled “GoPro Occupation: Networked Cameras, Israeli Military Rule, and the Digital Promise,” Rebecca L. Stein, an associate professor of anthropology at Duke University, analyses the term she coins as the “analytics of lapse,” which describes the instance when a photographic instrument or associated media framework fails to deliver the communicative response it intended to create. Stein conveys there is a gap between the intention of the image maker and the interpretative framework of the audience the image is meant for. For this paper, Stein analyzes the use of photographic technology by the Israeli military, in their attempts to expand their nation branding and portray their message as “a nation under fire,” to gain support for their actions during the occupation. She also focuses on the photographic technology used by Israeli Human Rights groups, which are meant to capture and convey the state violence carried out by the Israeli government and military. She applies the idea of the “lapse” in the use of these technologies and frameworks, to better explain the idea of the “counter shot,” which is used to debase the claim these cyber-utopias (or New Media) convey about digital media producing more transparent evidence, freedom of speech, and accountability.

To gain their own foothold within the visual field, the Israeli military developed the Combat Camera Project, to provide an alternative narrative to the one’s being displayed by Human Rights groups and Palestinian civilians via phone cameras, camcorder, go pros, etc. This project enabled Israeli soldiers to become active participants in the PR process, by equipping them with body cameras, and delegating certain members of reconnaissance groups with the task of documenting the actions taking place. However, even though there were more cameras in the Palestinian territories than ever before, there was hardly any depictions of state violence being shown publicly which would back the narratives being conveyed by Human Rights Organizations, as well as the Palestinians who lived in the area. This is because cameras and other photographic depictions were carefully placed and procured to only show what was beneficial to the military’s image.

Photo Credit: “The Times of Israel”

For example, during the events of the Gaza Strip in 2014, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) worked closely with the images procured in “the visual operations room,” a secure locale which showed the multitude of cameras streaming the events taking place in the war. This was for PR purposes. Their challenge was to retaliate against the expanse of social media footage being screened and uploaded by Gazan Palestinians showing the violence and death procured by the Israeli State. During an interview with an officer from the IDF, Stein asked about the operations and process which took place in procuring and conveying these images used by the military for PR purposes. The IDF Official explained they take freeze shots of the footage which are later edited using subcaptions and arrows drawn on the frame. This is done to better emphasize the actions taking place in the footage, and draw the audience’s attention to a certain subject in the frame.

Photo Credit: “An IDF Spokesperson’s Unit Situation Room in Tel Aviv”

The use of freeze frames and drawing arrows on the pictures towards the intended target is like the practice carried out by the US military, during their strikes against the Command-and-Control Facility in Tikrit. This image, like the images used by the IDF for PR purposes, shows arrows pointing to different sites which have been bombed by the US military. Lisa Parks, another scholar who analyzed the effects of embedding arrows to direct the gaze of the audience, refers to this practice as “restricting the interrogative mode”. Arrows are strategically positioned by the image maker to provide an audience with a quick read of the events which took place, which according to Parks can create rapid fore assumptions about what the image could represent.  

Photo Credit: “globalsecurity”

Both Stein and Parks’ ideas of “lapse” and “restriction of the interrogative mode,” also fall under Mirzoeff’s idea of “visuality” and “counter visuality”. Specifically, the authority’s visuality, which is often equal to the world view of how an audience is meant to interpret images. According to Mirzoeff, the goal of the authority's visuality, is to naturalize their narrative into the position of the world's social order. Similar to how the Israeli military created the Combat Camera Project and the Visual Operations Room to operationalize the use of images in the field to provide content in the media world depicting  their narrative.  

The Bitunyia Shootings, conveys the “lapse” (counter shot) which occurs across the photographic media spectrum. During a protest in Bitunyia, two teenagers were caught being shot by several different cameras. These cameras were all filming at the same time, but in different locations, and by different image takers. One camera came from a CNN TV cameraman, the others from street cameras, body cameras, and phone cameras. A case was brought against the military personnel involved, and the footage was then brought as evidence. There was a series of meticulous and complex visual forensics that took place to prove that these teenagers had been deliberately shot by the Israeli military. Videos of the same scene were run at the same time, comparing vantage points of the gun, the sounds the gun made on each camera, where the teenagers and gunmen were in each footage. This conveys that even if you have photographic evidence showing the real time, real environment, and real sound, it cannot be taken at face value. All types of factors come into play:

The angle of the shot, what was the purpose of the image for the image taker?

How the audience will react to the image being show?

The frame length of the photo (is something being cropped out?)

The quality of the photo (is it too blurry, is the sound too muffled?)

There appears to be a threat that once you consider images as evidence, it puts the information they hold in crisis immediately. There isn’t a clear understanding of the situation, regardless of if images were taken of the event. It seems we can’t really know what we are looking at unless we are their ourselves. 

The work titled, “Along the Lines of the Occupation: Playing at Diminished Reality in East Jerusalem,” is written by Fabio Cristiano and Emillio Distretti. Their aim for the paper is to distinguish how the virtual, interactive game “Pokémon Go!” produces its own virtual representation of Jerusalem. Specifically, through the factors which are a part of the games make up: such as walking, the lines which the players follow on the map that distinguish the actual streets and pathways of the city, and the void, the space which is not distinguished by the lines drawn on the map, which indicates a disruption between the real world and the games virtual representation of that world. Their main goal is to see how the factors of the game represent the 1949 Armistice Line, between Palestine and Israel, a border which was created for the separations of the two States, but has been made invisible by Israeli authorities, mainstream narratives, and policies.  

Photo Credit: “News Week”

In the game, there is a large green and/or blue line, which shows players where to go when they are attempting to capture a Pokémon. The line can take you to various points of the city and use main roads and pathways to get you to the destination. In East Jerusalem, there are many geographic and industrial distinctions which define the separations between the cities occupied territories. Israeli authorities created many of the lines which defined the geography and mobility of the two sections infrastructure, borders, and boundaries. The lines within Pokémon Go create a different distinction of the boundaries and borders of East Jerusalem. Where there was separation by the events of the Armistice Line, the alternate reality created by the visuals of Pokémon Go introduce a more unfired city rather than a separated one.

Photo Credit: “Jewcy”

There is also the important aspect of walking, which is the primary method of interaction the player has with the game, in relation to the physical world being shown by the game. In fact, walking presents an interesting concept of the relationship between the industrial and infrastructural realities being presented by both the physical world and virtual world at the same time. While you are walking in the physical world taking in the landscapes around you, you are also looking at the game, and its representation of the virtual world, to guide you to your destination.  

If you think about it, there appears to be an interesting “lapse” occurring with the use of Pokémon Go, and the player’s interaction with the industrial landscape of Jerusalem. The physical world may represent the narrative conveyed by Israeli authorities, but Pokémon Go offers the lapse or “counter shot” to this narrative. Uniting the landscape of the city, rather than highlighting the separations which were created by Israeli authorities.  

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Citizen’s Assimilation to Aerial Warfare

In the works of Lisa Parks and Roger Stahl, the concepts of aerial warfare, specifically by drones and satellite images, play a crucial role in normalizing the weaponized gaze, often curated for military use, for the spectatorship of the civic gaze. In Parks’ work tilted “Zeroing In: Overhead Imagery, Infrastructure, Ruins, and Data lands in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the author discusses how ‘zeroing in’ is a metaphor use to explain the position of the civic gaze regarding their position to world events and relations. In Stahl’s work titled, “Drone Vision,” the author discusses the dramatic growth of drone and aerial surveillance warfare, and how the civilian view of warfare has been altered by this new emergence of “eyes in the sky”.  

In Parks work, she focuses on the relationship between knowledge and aerial/orbital viewing. Specifically, how the act and/or metaphor of zeroing in positions viewers in relation to actual, real time world events, and how this has been magnetized by using aerial surveillance in news coverage, film, mainstream media to attract viewership and place said viewer in the spectral coverage of the situation. It also acts as a toll to view the world as something which should be targeted for observation, conquest, and (re)development.  

For example, Park’s uses the bombing of the communication infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan as an example of the three ideals for targeting. The satellite images presented in this situation represent how different parts of the world are represented as a site for scrutiny, destruction, and extraction.

For example, when it comes to the civic gaze of satellite images, most of us use Google Earth to provide an aerial surveillance of the world at large. From this platform, we act as not only spectators but maps men who scrutinize and extract information from the image we have decided to target.  

There is also the controversial use of consumerist drones, which are used recreationally for sports, travel, etc. But this is often held at the behest of controversy for privacy concerns, as people may fall victim to others praying upon them without their knowledge.  

In Stahl's work, he distinguishes the evolution of drone vision, and the narrative surrounding the controversy that drones create. One interesting section in this chapter was the aspect of the drone operator as a martyr, versus the people who fell victim to the drone strike. There is a psychological toll which takes place for the operator of the drone, even though he or she may not be present in the field, and it is the camera that acts as their physical embodiment. There is no easy ethical explanation for the use of drones in warfare. On one hand, it decreases the numbers of causalities when targeting people of interest in a warzone. On the other hand, drone strikes are known to cause multiple fatalities, for citizens and terrorists alike. The footage from drones has been known to be faulty as well, where the images on the screen appear as large blurs of movement, rather than distant forms of people who the operators are trying to identify. One-way citizens are opened to the weaponized gaze through the narratives presented in films.  

The film “Eye in the Sky”, Helen Mirren plays a British colonel tasked with eliminating a terrorist organization in Kenya. However, things seem to take a turn for the worse, when a young girl enters the danger sphere for where the team is supposed to strike. What is interesting about this movie, is the portrayal of distance and how this is interconnected through the drone, and the narrative surrounding the girl who will eventually be killed by the drone strike. The drone in question is operated by US military service men at a base in Nevada, they are in a small shed where they are controlling the drone. Hellen Mirren’s character is in the UK, and watching the actin take place from a dark control room, the girl on screen is in Kenya. At first the team tries to save the girl from the ordeal the know is bound to happen, but in the end, those controlling the drone are powerless to do anything, even though they are the perpetrators and controllers of the strike. Hellen Mirren and the Team is the US eventually have been left with “no choice”, but to kill the young girl in the drone strike as well as the mission takes priority. At the end of the movie, we see Helen Mirren walk out of the control room with a somber look on her face, and the family of the girl in Kenya scrambling over her injured body, desperately trying to help their daughter.

Photo Credit: “Drone Center”

Photo Credit: “US Operatives”

Photo Credit: “Okay, can we bomb them yet?”

There seems to be a consistent narrative presented in both fiction and reality when it comes to the use of drones. Specifically, the ability to see and receive knowledge for aerial surveillance at a large distance, and the disability in not be able to help innocent bystanders who are in the way of the mission. The question is up in the air: who should we feel more sympathetic towards? Those who perpetrate the violence taking place or those who have been deemed unworthy compared to the mission at hand?

By placing these very real circumstances on the big screen for civic viewing, drone warfare and military activities are domesticized, which in turn promotes the activity of civilians consuming the weaponized gaze.  

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(EDITED 2025) Virtual and Virtuous War: “Critical Practices in international Theory,” by James Der Derian

(Soldiers from Britain's Royal Artillery train in a "virtual world" during Exercise Steel Sabre, 2015)

In “Critical Practices in International Theory,” James Der Derian develops two key concepts, virtual war and virtuous war, to describe how digital technologies are transforming the conduct and perception of contemporary conflict. In chapters 15 and 17, he traces both terms to a shared Greco-Roman etymology while underscoring their divergent implications in the age of digitally mediated warfare.

The term Virtual War refers to the increasing technologization of conflict, in which battles are fought through screens, simulations, and remote-controlled weapons systems. Drone warfare exemplifies this shift: military personnel operate unmanned aerial vehicles from thousands of miles away, observing combat not directly but through video feeds. This mediation creates a disembodied, almost gamified experience, in which war is reframed as a simulation rather than an embodied encounter with violence.

The virtualization of war is powerful precisely because of its omnipotence. As technological systems expand the reach of military power, they also sanitize the relationship between combatant and target. Drone operators can surveil, track, and kill with the push of a button, erasing distance and collapsing time. In this sense, virtual war becomes virtuous war when the technological capacity to kill is framed as a moral responsibility: That is, when the “clean” precision of drone strikes is presented as minimizing risk to one’s own forces and, ostensibly, to civilians. Here, the ethical justification for digital warfare lies not in proximity to violence but in its very mediation, which is cast as humanitarian and “just.”

This convergence of virtual and virtuous war resonates with Achille Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitics. As Mbembe argues, sovereignty in the modern world is defined by the right to decide who may live and who must die. Similarly, the virtualization of warfare produces new forms of necropower, whereby technological systems extend the capacity to surveil and annihilate bodies anywhere, anytime, under the legitimizing cover of precision and virtue. For drone operators, the experience of distance provides insulation from the realities of death; for those on the ground, however, the experience remains one of vulnerability, exposure, and violent dispossession.

The ethical dilemmas of digital warfare therefore emerge at this intersection. Advocates frame virtualization as a necessary evolution, one that protects military personnel while enhancing accuracy. Critics, however, contend that it fosters a dangerous detachment from the human consequences of violence. By insulating operators from the battlefield, virtual war risks eroding the very “virtues” of combat; courage, accountability, and recognition of the enemy as human; replacing them with a techno-rationalized necropolitics in which killing is clean, remote, and bureaucratically sanctioned.

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Necropower, Biopower, and Becoming Black in the World: An Analysis on Achille Mbembe’s Works.

Achille Mbembe is a Cameroonian political philosopher, theorist, and intellectual who has written several works surrounding African culture, post-colonial history, sociology, and politics. Over the past decade, Mbembe has investigated several key issues surrounding the term sovereignty and how this is practiced in modern day theory. In his essay titled, “Necropolitics,” Mbembe introduces the concept that the “ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.” (Mbembe 2003) He argues the ability and power to exercise the decision over who may live and who may die, represents the present limits surrounding the practice of sovereign power. He then goes on to convey what variables take shape in practicing necro power, and how we can begin to identify the practice of necro politics on subjects.  

The topic within the essay references Michael Foucault's term “biopower,” which Mbembe uses as a focal point surrounding his theories of necro power and necropolitics. Foucault's literature conveys biopower as a tool used to control the population. How this relates to sovereignty under Mbembe’s literature, is that sovereignty is exercised over people’s lives as an extension of State power. This is the origin of the term biopolitics, where the practices within life such as mortality are being controlled by the State. He discusses the concept of what is known as “civilized killings” or “the right to kill” which is an extension of bipower, known as necro power. Biopower is no longer the control over one’s body, but the practices within the framework which can lead to a person’s death. 

An example of the State practicing bio power over the population’s life, is the “One Child Policy,” which was introduced by the Chinese government to decrease overpopulation in the country. The Policy was introduced in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping after he took office. The policy was enacted to thrust the nation out of poverty by altering the demographic structure of the nation. However, the policy also had unforeseen side effects such as infanticide, since most families favored boys over girls. This practice could also be viewed as biopower turning into necropower, as the policy was used to control the bodies of the people, and eventually lead to premature natal deaths. 

Image reference: One Child Policy Wiki

Necropower and its Manifestations 

According to Mbembe, the “most accomplished form of necro power is the contemporary colonial occupation of Palestine.” (Mbembe 2003). In the section titled “Necro Power and Late Modern Colonial Occupations,” Mbembe references literature from Frantz Fanon and Weizman about territorial fragmentation, and how the splitting of geography is used to divide occupied territories. As stated before, necro power is how biopower evolves when we think about the death of the body. Specifically, how this can be used when distributing power. Fragmentation is a manifestation of necro power, and how it is used by Governments, Militaries, etc. to construct danger and lead to risks of death. Fragmentation according to Fanon and Weizman can take several key forms. These include the separation of geographical spaces, to render movement impossible by confining groups to a specific place. The use of topographical environments, such as the space between the ground and the sky, as vantage points to control occupied territories. This includes using high terrain as a vantage point to oversee and control the landscape which can be used to confine people, as well as protect those from danger. Finally, Mbembe references the infrastructure point of view, which is the implementation of infrastructure within an occupied State to construct and emphasize the two separate geographies found within the same landscape. This manifestation is characterized by infrastructure when there is a hefty network of “bypass roads, bridges, and tunnels that weave over and under one another.” (Mbembe 2003). The author also explains “at points where the networks do cross, a makeshift separation is created, small dust roads are dug out to allow Palestinians to cross under the fast, wide highways on which Israeli vans and military vehicles rush between settlements.” (Mbembe 2003). The sovereign power uses the physical terrain to subjugate, separate, and often kill populations whose territories they occupy.

Mbembe: “Becoming Black of the World”

In his second work titled “The Becoming Black of The World,” Mbembe focuses on the changing social order surrounding the eurocentric view of race and racism, and how this view is beginning to decline on the new world order. He starts by explaining how in the past race and racism were considered two sides of the same coin by Europeans. To be Black could have meant several key things. Fo one, it meant to be dirty or to be ignorant in the face of civilization, to be a part of the master – valet relationship. On the other hand, black was also considered as the salt of the earth, and that to be Black was to be the origin and life blood of humanity's relationship with nature. However, according to Mbembe, due to various futuristic advancements such as neoliberalism and capital, the term “Black” is being reinvented into something which transcends its historical use, and is now something which can be widely used to describe the norm of subaltern humanity.  

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WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGERY Butler and Dorlin Readings

White Paranoia & The Racial Hegemonic Framework in the Visual Field

During the month of March in 1991, a taxi driver, Rodney King, was pursued by police in what appeared to be high speed pursuit down the streets of Los Angeles. King, an African American male, was later stopped by LA police, and proceeded to be brutally beaten by four officers. In an attempt to protect himself from the savage beating, King raised his hands over his head to shield himself from the powerful blows. The police officers in question continued to beat King with their batons, kicking him, punching him, and yelling various racial jargons. The beating proceeded to go on for one minute and nineteen seconds. King was continuously beaten into the ground by a multitude of officers, despite being unarmed, and non-threatening.  

The reason why we know anything about this event, is because passerby, George Holiday, happened to see the events unfolding. He proceeded to take out his camcorder and film the events. His footage was later used in court as one of the primary sources of evidence during the trial of Rodney King. Despite the graphic nature of the still frames used in court, a primarily Caucasian jury voted in favor of acquitting the police for their actions.

(Image Source: https://english.elpais.com/elpais/2017/05/25/inenglish/1495709209_218886.html)

Judith Butler, an American-born philosopher, takes on the events of the Rodney King case to explain the schematics of white paranoia and how this effects the visual field. In her essay “Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia” , Butler discusses why the jury would choose to acquit the officers of their violent actions. In her essay, Butler describes the events found within the footage. She proceeds to convey the meaning of gestures carried out in the scene, and how the jury is interpretation from a primarily white perspective, Butler discuses a great deal about how the visual field is a “racially contested terrain” (Butler 17), meaning there is a racist hegemony over the field of visuality. What we are necessarily seeing in the photo is King defending himself against his attackers. However, what the jury has seen is a man not acting in self-defense, but rather self-defiance. Butler believes the actions of the jury prove there is a contest within the visual filed. One which operates under a racist framework. A framework which puts to test the two sides of the visual spectrum the jury is witnessing. On one hand, this visual shows a brutal beating carried out with mal intent. On the other hand, the eyes which are seeing through the Lense of white paranoia, the police are in an act of vulnerability to save themselves from the constant threat of the black body. In this case, the hand King holds above his head is seen as a threat to the peace the police maintain, versus him acting in self-defense for his life.

(Image Source: http://www.lefotochehannosegnatounepoca.it/2017/04/04/pestaggio-rodney-king-parte-agenti-polizia-los-angeles/)

To better explain this concept, Butler uses key concepts from the works of Frantz Fanon. Fanon describes the black body being perceived by the white body as a dangerous actor. Any gesture carried out by the black body is a gesture of violence towards the white body. The police are seen as the barrier which protects the white body from the black body, and are therefore the automatic heroes of the situation. In her essay, Butler writes "this is not a simple seeing, an act of direct perception, but the racial production of the visible, the workings of racial constraints on what it means to "see"(Butler 16). Based on the racist framework which according to Butler exits in the visual field, any actions the black body takes, even in defense if oneself, will always be seen as a threat, and the actions taken by police are therefore justifiable regardless of the situation. The truth within the photos shown in the courtroom, were what the jurors intended it to be. The still frames captured the senseless beating of King, but the racist framework surrounding the act of seeing created a message which favored the police. In this case, the subconscious interpretation of the visual transcended the actual physical actions taking place in the footage. This conveys another contest within the spectrum of visual culture, making us question how we perceive images, and what the factual or relative truth is.

The Defended and Defenseless

Elsa Dorlin also offers her interpretation of how the black body is perceived in the visual filed. In her work, “What a Body Can Do,” Dorlin alludes to Butler’s work, and references the Rodeny King case as evidence that "the racial schematisation of perceptions defines both the production of the perceived and what it means to perceive" (Dorlin 2019). Basically, Dorling conveys two important concepts, “the defended” and “the defenseless”. The defended, is the dominant subject of the situation. The defended has the power to act in their own self-defense, but also chooses who can kill, care for, and conserve. They also have the power to choose who will be the defenseless of the situation. The defenseless, are those who are allowed to protect themselves, but the more they protect themselves the greater the risk of damage becomes. Overall, the defended hold the sovereignty of what, who, and how a situation is handled. The defenseless are therefore led on by the defended to exercise their right to defend, but then assume the consequences of defending themselves against a dangerous power.  

Different Body, Same Story

The Rodney King trial from 1991 has not been the only trial of its kind. There have been many instances of police brutality against black bodies, where police are still perceived as the righteous of the situation. For instance, in February 2018, Ronell Foster, an African American Male and father of two, was riding his bike home one night from work. A police officer, Ryan McMahon, saw Foster on his bike, swerving in and out of traffic. McMahon apprehended Foster to the side of the road, Foster, who was a convicted felon for carjacking proceeded to flee the scene. McMahon then proceeded to apprehend Foster by tackling and tasering him several times in the chest and stomach to cease Foster’s struggling. The struggling, due to immense pain from the electricity continued, McMahon proceeded to beat Foster with a police grade flashlight. Several shots were fired, and Foster was left dead in the dark bushes.

(Image Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/07/vallejo-police-shooting-bike-ronell-foster-willie-mccoy)

The police camcorder footage sent to McMahon's trial was used as a primary source of evidence. In footage, the audience can see the struggle taking place. McMahon tackles Foster to the ground, proceeds to tase and beat him. Foster then lifts his hand up to grasp at the flashlight McMahon is hitting him with, McMahon removes himself from atop foster’s body. Foster proceeds to drop the flashlight and appears to make a run for the bushes in an attempt to escape. Mcmahon then shoots Foster dead before he can escape.  

Solana County District Officials decided to not bring charges against McMahon, even though Foster was unarmed and being stopped for a minor traffic infraction. The jurors in question decided that the footage was evidence foster proposed immediate threat to the officer, and the cations carried out were appropriate.  

This case closely ties in with the Rodney King case, as it is another example of white paranoia taking control of the visual field through a racial hegemonic framework.  

Based on the content of the readings, Dorlin leaves her audience with an insightful quote:

"What must be interrogated is this process by which perceptions come to be socially constructed, produced by a corpus that continues to constrain any possible act of knowledge" (Dorlin 2019)

Can we continue to interpret images properly, knowing there is a racial undertone to the perception of the physical embodiment? If we continue to interpret images within a biased framework, how will we ever perceive the actual truth? What steps need to be taken concerning not only our right to look, but also our responsibility to view something within a non-biased framework.  

Sources:

Butler, J. (1993) ‘Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia’, in Gooding-Williams, R., Reading Rodney King Reading Urban Uprising, New York and London: Routledge.

Dorlin, E. (2019). ‘What a body can do’, Radical Philosophy

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(EDITED 2025) The Visual and The Counter Visual: An Analysis on Mirzoeff’s “The Right to Look” + A Case Study on the Abu Ghraib Events

Abu Ghraib, Empire, and the Policing of Images 

At a U.S.-controlled prison in Iraq, the unimaginable became routine. Detainees accused of terrorist activity were subjected to violent and degrading forms of torture at the hands of American Military Police and Military Intelligence. The “Standard Operating Procedures” of interrogation—waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation—were already designed to break bodies and extract information. Yet the photographs that emerged from Abu Ghraib revealed something further: acts of ritualized humiliation, sexualized violence, and staged scenes of sodomy and domination. These images went beyond interrogation—they became a theater of power, a carefully choreographed performance of imperial sovereignty enacted upon the detainee’s body.

The central question, then, is not only how this occurred, but also how it was seen—or not seen—by the West. Iraqi citizens were well aware of abuses at the prison, yet the broader Western public remained largely insulated from such knowledge until an insider leaked the photographs. Even then, circulation was partial and mediated. As Mirzoeff argues, “[audiences] were not permitted to see what was happening unless it favored the American narrative” (22). This underscores a key principle of visuality: the structuring of visibility and invisibility in accordance with dominant power. The U.S. empire did not merely control detainees’ bodies; it controlled their representation, producing a regime of images that concealed systemic violence beneath selective spectacle.

Here, Mirzoeff’s discussion of Empire, drawing on Hardt and Negri, becomes vital. Empire is not a territorial regime but a de-territorialized network of global capital and control, operating without fixed boundaries. Within this framework, visual culture is the preferred mode of governance: instantaneous, networked, and ubiquitous. The internet and digital media do not liberate perception; rather, they form a permanent infrastructure of communication, policed and weaponized by imperial authority. Visuality thus becomes a form of biopolitical management, disciplining not only bodies but also the gaze itself—deciding who can see, what can be seen, and how it must be interpreted.

The Abu Ghraib photographs embody this paradox. On the one hand, they are obscene spectacles of domination, their scopophilic charge unmistakable: naked, hooded detainees reduced to objects of voyeuristic pleasure for the guards who posed them. On the other hand, their circulation was tightly managed. As Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure(2008) notes, photographs rarely indict the true guilty parties; they can obscure as much as they reveal. Many images were cropped, staged, or altered—some erasing individuals who might implicate higher-ranking officials. One infamous photograph of Lyndie England holding a prisoner on a dog leash was edited to remove another soldier, thereby protecting him from scrutiny. In this sense, the image becomes a technology of scapegoating: low-ranking MPs, captured in the frame, became the focus of outrage and punishment, while the invisible structures of command escaped accountability.

What were these photographs for? Official policy forbade photography, yet the images were not produced as evidence but as trophies—circulated on personal cameras as markers of dominance and belonging within the military unit. They were less documents of interrogation than performances of sovereign spectacle, in which the imperial body asserted its supremacy over the racialized “other.” In Agamben’s terms, the detainee becomes homo sacer: stripped of political rights, reduced to “bare life,” and subjected to violence without legal consequence. The camera does not simply record this reduction—it participates in it, transforming the detainee’s suffering into a consumable image.

The manipulation of these images reveals how photographs are never neutral records of reality. They are always embedded in regimes of power, subject to staging, cropping, and selective circulation. A photograph may appear to present truth, but as Debord reminds us, in the society of the spectacle, what matters is not reality itself but its representation. Each frame poses questions: What precedes and follows this moment? What was excluded from view? How does the arrangement of bodies stage dominance, submission, or authority? And more importantly—who controls the circulation of the image, and to what end?

This logic of the spectacle extends beyond Abu Ghraib. A French government office once tweeted an image of women in hijabs waiting outside a French social service center. Yet the un-cropped image revealed a London bus stop sign and vehicles driving on the left—clearly identifying the location as England. The cropped version reinforced anxieties around immigration and Islam in France, whereas the un-cropped photo told a very different story. This example illustrates the ease with which images are weaponized to support dominant narratives, reinforcing national identity myths while erasing inconvenient realities.

Taken together, these cases illustrate the mechanics of visual culture in the age of empire. Photographs appear to offer transparency, but they are always mediated, always policed. They can expose violence but also contain it, directing outrage toward visible scapegoats while preserving the invisibility of systemic power. As Mirzoeff suggests, global visuality is less a space of emancipation than a field of control: A network in which the imperial body governs not only territory and populations, but also the very terms of what can be seen, known, and remembered

(image: observers.france24.com 2018)

The Right to Look

What, then, can be done to prevent such acts from reoccurring? At the close of his discussion, Mirzoeff introduces what he calls “the right to look”—an act of liberation from the policed image, and a practice he frames as the counter visual(41). This right is not merely about seeing but about reclaiming visibility from structures of power that dictate what may and may not be seen. While Mirzoeff acknowledges that such a right cannot, on its own, prevent atrocities like Abu Ghraib, it does open the possibility of reshaping the politics of global visuality. The right to look constitutes a direct challenge to the “domain of the police”—that is, the mechanisms by which power organizes perception, controls circulation, and enforces the dominant narrative

Mirzoeff lists eight elements comprising The Right to Look:

1. Obscure and concealed operations of globalization

2. Seen by the common as a counter to being disappeared by governments

3. Right to knowing when you're under surveillance

4. Right to accessing records of surveillance

5. Right to visual self-representation

6. Right to access to visual media

7. Right to visual literacy education

8. Right to secular viewpoint

Sources:

Mirzoeff's 'Invisible Empire' (2006)

https://moodle.johncabot.edu/pluginfile.php/257192/mod_forum/intro/Invisible_Empire_Visual_Culture_Embodied_Spectacle.pdf

The Observers - France 24

https://observers.france24.com/en/20180824-verification-guide-cropped-photo-video

[violenceinvisculture]

(EDITED 2025) A Reflection & Analysis on Mirzoeff’s “Introduction to Visual Culture”

An Intro to Images

According to Mirzoeff, the term visual does not represent the sense of sight, but the perspective and world making within the spectrum of visual culture. In this chapter, the author conveys the significance of the human imagination, and how one consumes data from their physical senses to best understand the environment they are experiencing. The author states, “[vision], is active world making where sensory data is combined to make a “view” by which we literally and metaphorically see the world” (Mirzoeff 2016). What this could imply, is through visual mediums such as films, pictures, and maps, individuals can ascertain judgement to interpret and perceive the environment which they have become spectator to. However, looking at a photograph or video does not necessarily mean you are gazing upon the truth. Mirzoeff also conveys the significance of policing in visual culture, to which the author refers to Donna Haraway’s statement, “vision is always a question of the power to see” (Mirzoeff 2016). Although images may appear to be the reality of a situation, visual mediums can be policed into forming a narrative. A narrative which can be solely based on a singular perspective. 

As an example, we can compare two photographs taken during the Obama and Trump presidencies. The photograph with Obama and his Cabinet is taken during their viewing of the Osama Bin Laden assassination. The photograph with Trump and his Cabinet was taken after the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Both take place in the Situation Room of the White House, and show both presidents with their respective cabinets overseeing pivotal moments of their terms. 

(Image Source: Wikipedia)

(Image Source: APnews)

Both photographs project an air of seriousness, yet they differ significantly in how that gravity is conveyed. In the first image, featuring President Obama, the tone is marked by a more casual and spontaneous atmosphere. Obama wears a windbreaker, Biden appears in a simple button-up shirt without a tie, and many of the others present seem disheveled, as though caught in the midst of intense movement and urgency. By contrast, the second photograph, with President Trump and his senior officials, presents a far more formal image: polished suits, crisp uniforms, and an overall impression of order and control.

Another key distinction lies in the sense of movement and attention. In the Obama-era photograph, officials are wholly absorbed in the unfolding Bin Laden raid, their gazes fixed on the screen rather than the camera. Their expressions are tense, arms crossed, bodies leaning forward or scattered across the room with some standing and some seated. The candidness of the scene suggests they are unaware of the photographer’s presence. In contrast, the Trump photograph is carefully staged. Every Official faces the camera directly, postured with deliberate intensity. Their awareness of being photographed transforms the moment into one of calculated presentation rather than unfiltered engagement.

The seating arrangements further underscore this contrast. Obama sits slightly off to the side, positioned as an observer among his team. Trump, meanwhile, occupies the central seat at the head of the table, framed by the presidential seal directly above him, reinforcing his authority as the focal point of the image.

Taken together, these differences suggest that while both photographs convey seriousness, the Obama image carries an air of authenticity, whereas the Trump image appears more orchestrated, its purpose not only to record but also to project superiority and control. This distinction illustrates how visual media can be “policed” or stage. Those in power shaping what the audience sees in order to craft a deliberate narrative.

Visuals and War: From Maps to Drones

This chapter of the book formulates an essential question: How are visual mediums used in war to create vision? Vision being termed as the psychological act of seeing. In this reading, the author analyzes the historical chronology of visual mediums used in war. Maps, one of the first key visual mediums, were used to envision battle formations. Knowing the geographic lay of the environment offered military officials insight into how battles could play out. They could envision vantage points, the weakest spots on the field, and estimate where a majority of the fighting would take place. Using imagination, they were able to build a world surrounding the battle, deducing possible successes and failures.

Over time, the use of maps have been replaced by drone surveillance footage, that according to Mirzoeff’s analysis, holds its advantages as well as disadvantages. For example, blurry drone surveillance, which are referred to as “bugsplats,” lead to the misidentification of targets, which in turn lead to collateral damage and civilian casualties. There is also the moral and psychological dilemma drone operators experience, such as the dehumanization of targets caused by the physical distancing between the target and operator. There are also strategic and tactical limitations, such as the tunnel vision which may occur from the over reliance of surveillance systems. Leading decision makers to forgo forms of on-the-ground intelligence, creating a sense of total knowledge completely reliant upon surveillance technology. 

Sources:

Mirzoeff, N. (2016). How to see the world : An introduction to images, from self-portraits to selfies, maps to movies, and more. New York: Basic Books. https://moodle.johncabot.edu/pluginfile.php/257190/mod_forum/intro/Intro.pdf

How to see The World. The World of War. https://moodle.johncabot.edu/pluginfile.php/257190/mod_forum/intro/The_world_of_war.pdf