In the text Critique of Violence, Benjamin posits that violence is at the heart of all law. Violence which is translated from the German term gewalt is also suitably defined as power, force, authority and control. Simply put, this power is what legitimises law. The paradox of the law is that the violence which precisely establishes it is that which it engenders to control and suppress. In this sense the law recognises the inherent power of violence to establish law and thus fears violence in undermining its authority. Benjamin distinguishes two separate forms of violence that can be judged on the basis of their use-value: law-making violence and law-preserving violence. The former is that which the law fears will destroy it and the latter is which Benjamin urges poses a threat to both the law and individuals alike. Law-preserving violence is the law’s attempt at maintaining a ‘monopoly of violence’ in order to safeguard its position of authority. Thus this violence threatens the law when it is exercised in the hands of individuals precisely because it is not sanctioned by the law itself. More succinctly, the law fears violence that attempts to destroy it and violence which falls outside of its means of control. Secondly, Benjamin identifies the fatalistic threat of law-preserving violence for subjects. Here he declares that this violence does not act as a deterrent to certain forms of behaviour because ‘a deterrent in the exact sense would require a certainty that contradicts the nature of the threat and is not attained by any law, since there is always hope of eluding the arm’ instead law-preserving violence is akin to fate that looms overhead (1921: 242). The repeated reference to the fatalistic attribution of law in Benjamin’s critique introduces a transcendental element inherent in the violence of law. Here he inscribes the notion of mythic violence that is lawmaking and bloody whereby power is at the foundation of it. Conversely, divine violence is law destroying and bloodless with justice pursued as its ends. Mythic lawmaking is akin to constitutional law that establishes itself after periods of war and destruction in an attempt to create “peace” through violent law. And it is thus power which is guaranteed through mythic violence that creates laws for “peace”. Divine violence, on the other hand, destroys this mythic law and opposes it. The power of the divine is pure and exists outside of the law. It employs violence as a means for justice that is only designated by God. In this regard divine violence exceeds the mortal world by creating a new order whereby true justice can be redeemed.
Derrida’s critique similarly converges on the authoritative nature of the law and he abstracts his analysis from a citation by Montaigne that states, ‘laws keep up their good standing, not because they are just, but because they are laws: that is the mystical foundation of authority’ (1990: 12). This self-referential quality of law, in essence, reveals that at the heart of law there is no legitimate authority. Law however, does not concede to this proposition and instead proclaims itself as the foreseer of justice. Justice thus becomes the touchstone for law’s monopoly of power and violence and this is precisely where Derrida begins his critique on law by deconstructing the notion of justice. For Derrida, enforceability is that which law relies upon to justify itself. Without force or enforcement the law is undermined. It is through this force that the law is able to justify itself, or as he simply puts it, the law ‘is justified in applying itself’ (1990: 5). Hence power is not a priori, but emerges through the force and the violence that reinforces its strength. Essentially for Derrida, this justification is invalid as he posits that justice can never be realised. Thus, law and justice are distinct facets. Law is not obeyed because it is just; rather law is obeyed merely because it is a law. Law’s claim to justice quite simply reduces it to a performative action, desire or force; in which case it becomes a case of interpretation that removes any sense of truth or validation. Derrida distinguishes between justice, which is infinite and incalculable, and justice as law, which refers to right and legitimacy. Justice can never be obtained because it is precisely that which is incalculable and undecidable and thus any decision made on behalf of justice is solely justice as law; a ruling made on the basis of what is legitimate according to the law or within the parameters of a set of rules. Thus this leaves justice as ‘yet to come’ and opens up a space for the transformation of law and politics in their permanent attempts to achieve it (Derrida 1990).
Both Derrida and Benjamin acknowledge the fundamental force, violence and coercion inherent in law; and in this respect is what grants law the power and authority over subjects, even though it is essentially self-referential. Similarly, both theorists unite in their conceptualisations of ‘justice, or divine violence,’ which cannot be obtained, but which ‘remains a possibility that is the ground for thinking’ (Andrade 2004: 4). For Derrida justice is what is to come and for Benjamin justice is that which attaches itself to divine violence and which cannot be fulfilled in the earthly sense. Derrida, however makes no distinction between law-preserving violence and law-making violence and rather posits that in fact they are one and the same. In this respect, he views that the violence perpetrated by law always fulfils both functions of preservation and foundation. Thus the law, he continues, and its self-legitimising doctrine must be suspended in order to employ its violence and execute its function. And as a result of this continuous suspension of the law to reinforce itself, the law in and of itself assumes a performative role. As a result, we become subjects of a ‘law not yet determined’ and thus ‘the law is transcendent and theological, and so always to come, always promised, because it is imminent, finite and so already past’ (Derrida 1990: 36). In this light, the law retains power over its subjects even though it is formless and exists above us solely in a permanent state of imminence. Therefore it is precisely this ‘mystical foundation of authority’ which the law encompasses that positions it as a thematic issue in cultural theory.
Andrade, M.M., 2004. Deferring Judgment: Reading Derrida’s Reading against the Grain. Studies in the Humanities, 31(1),
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, pp.25-35.
Benjamin, W., 1921. Critique of Violence. In: M. Bullock & M. W. Jennings, eds. 1996. Selected Writings: Volume 1 1913-1926. Boston, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 236-52.
Derrida, J., 1990. The Force of the Law: ‘The Mystical Foundation of Authority’. 11 Cardozo Law Review 919. pp. 3-67.
Friday 13 January 2012
the real
Lacan’s notion of the real, which is not synonymous with reality, is the fundamental basis of life and as he posits, it is where we begin our existence in the world. Within the domain of the Real, one’s existence is fused with the environment and in particular its mother’s existence. There is no separation between the individual and the world in which he inhabits and this is where basic needs are manifest. The real, Lacan declares, ‘is the mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious’ (1975: 71). Lacan further identifies a second domain, that of the Imaginary whereby we become separated from the real and lose our connection and unification with our Mother. This sequestration induces the identification of ‘I’. This Ideal-I is a fabricated wholeness that is created in an attempt to regain a sense of unification and develops as a reflection of those around him and thus masks the multitude of the subject under a falsely unified ideal. It is within the Imaginary order where our needs within the real are recognised as demands and it is between the realm of the real and the imaginary where we experience reality (Lacan 1975). Lastly, we inhabit a Symbolic domain where language becomes a paramount aspect of our existence and relation to the world. Here language matures our demands into desires. Symbols in the form of language, but not limited to it, dictate our perceptions and experiences of the world. Thus language takes over to make up for the loss with the real (Lacan 1975) as we impose a symbolic order onto our world.
Badiou departs from the notion of the One, in terms of the existence of an overarching unified truth and existence. Instead, he contends that existence is comprised as multiplicity. What we may know as one, is only nominal. Rather, being is designated as pure multiple, like the numbers within a set which are infinite but are designated as one set alongside a multiplicity of other sets. Thus Badiou’s ontology is solely mathematical and multiple in its foundation and rejects the use of rhetoric to understand being. Secondly, Badiou fundamentally contests the postmodern conceptualizations of a multitude of truths. For him, truth does not exist in the divine transcendent manner; conversely it does not exist in the postmodern sense of fragmentation and multitudes. Rather for Badiou, truth exists as a universal-singular. This refers to the notion that truth begins in the subjective singular form and has the capacity to develop into a universal truth particular to the situation in which it arises. Or as Badiou concisely puts it: ‘a truth procedure is only universal insofar as it is supported, at the point through which it indexes the real, by an immediate subjective recognition of its singularity’ (2003: 22). For Badiou, life is made up of a multiplicity of situations that carry within them no inherent truth. Rather truth emerges from the Void of a situation which he terms the Event. The Void, as described in Badiou’s (2003) Being and Event, is particular to situations and beings, which exist as multiplicity of multiples. Thus, in rejecting the notion of the One, we are thrust into an infinite ambiguity of origin. Hence for Badiou, this multiplicity of multiplicity is has its origins only in multiplicity. Hence any endeavour at an origin only can retrieve a multiplicity of void. And it is here that we can observe ontology as conceptualised within the situation rather than external or omnipotent. Consequently, truth emerges out of nothing so-to-speak and becomes an Event through predication by a subject. In this regard ‘the truth is always the truth of a specific situation (Žižek 1999: 130).
Badiou and Lacan’s theories converge at the notion of truth. For both theorists the conceptualisation of truth is removed from its omnipotence on par with knowledge and is instead located in the realm of the subject. Badiou’s subject is what emerges upon naming or predicating the Truth-Event and by declaring its fidelity to the Event. In this respect, truth is not subjective, as it emerges from the Void of the situation, but rather the subject is a subject to the Truth of the Event (Žižek 1999). In the same vein, Lacan posits that the subject ‘retains an irreducible relation to truth’ which is singular and unique to the subject (Hallward 2003: 12). Another point of convergence, Hallward continues, is the adherence that both Lacan and Badiou retain to the undeniable relation of mathematics to the real. It is here that both theorists conceptualise the real as not encompassing any inherent structure, but rather that it emerges through the subject and its encounter with the truth. For Badiou, the real is a static element embedded within the unpredictable framework of the situation, and as Žižek (1999: 141) rightly puts it, ‘an event is the traumatic encounter with the real’. For Lacan, on the other hand, the real is dynamic and can be expressed through the suspension of the Imaginary and Symbolic order. The real is precisely which shatters the Symbolic order and inhabits the space between them. Thus it is the inconsistency between Badiou’s pure multiple that equates to Lacan’s real (Žižek 1999). In this sense, the real is the formless space or existence which is manifest in the excess of the Symbolic order and that of the Truth-Event.
Lastly, the real for Baudrillard, is that which has been precisely fragmented in the postmodern condition. The real endures a transition in which it becomes subject to representation and signification in modernity. With postmodernity, however, the sign and the symbol mature from representation of the real to the real or hyperreal. Thus what emerges is the simulation of the real by the imaginary or the symbolic, to which we become engrossed in a world of hyperreality where the ‘real from which all meaning and charm, all depth and energy of representation have vanished in a hallucinatory resemblance’ (Baudrillard 1981; 15). Baudrillard’s real is that which is always manifest in the reflection of an image. That is to say, the real is never experienced first-hand but undergoes attenuation through representation.
Comparing Baudrillard with Lacan and Badiou, we can see how the real is always theorised as that which is below the surface, which is never directly perceptible. In the case of Lacan, the real order is that which emerges as a sort of neurosis, a trauma so to speak. The real can be regarded in the same fashion for Badiou, whose Truth-Event represents ‘the intrusion of the traumatic real that shatters the predominant symbolic texture’ (Žižek 1991: 147). Thus to conclude, the symbolic and simulation are what appear to cushion us from the profundity of the real that manifests itself at the foundation of our existences but which we must be continuously shielded from.
References
Badiou, A., 2003. St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Badiou, A., 2005. Being and Event. London: Continuum.
Baudrillard, J., 1981. Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press.
Hallward, P., 2003. Badiou: A Subject to Truth. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Lacan, J., 1975. On Feminine Sexuality the Limits of Love and Knowledge. London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Žižek, S., 1999. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.
Badiou departs from the notion of the One, in terms of the existence of an overarching unified truth and existence. Instead, he contends that existence is comprised as multiplicity. What we may know as one, is only nominal. Rather, being is designated as pure multiple, like the numbers within a set which are infinite but are designated as one set alongside a multiplicity of other sets. Thus Badiou’s ontology is solely mathematical and multiple in its foundation and rejects the use of rhetoric to understand being. Secondly, Badiou fundamentally contests the postmodern conceptualizations of a multitude of truths. For him, truth does not exist in the divine transcendent manner; conversely it does not exist in the postmodern sense of fragmentation and multitudes. Rather for Badiou, truth exists as a universal-singular. This refers to the notion that truth begins in the subjective singular form and has the capacity to develop into a universal truth particular to the situation in which it arises. Or as Badiou concisely puts it: ‘a truth procedure is only universal insofar as it is supported, at the point through which it indexes the real, by an immediate subjective recognition of its singularity’ (2003: 22). For Badiou, life is made up of a multiplicity of situations that carry within them no inherent truth. Rather truth emerges from the Void of a situation which he terms the Event. The Void, as described in Badiou’s (2003) Being and Event, is particular to situations and beings, which exist as multiplicity of multiples. Thus, in rejecting the notion of the One, we are thrust into an infinite ambiguity of origin. Hence for Badiou, this multiplicity of multiplicity is has its origins only in multiplicity. Hence any endeavour at an origin only can retrieve a multiplicity of void. And it is here that we can observe ontology as conceptualised within the situation rather than external or omnipotent. Consequently, truth emerges out of nothing so-to-speak and becomes an Event through predication by a subject. In this regard ‘the truth is always the truth of a specific situation (Žižek 1999: 130).
Badiou and Lacan’s theories converge at the notion of truth. For both theorists the conceptualisation of truth is removed from its omnipotence on par with knowledge and is instead located in the realm of the subject. Badiou’s subject is what emerges upon naming or predicating the Truth-Event and by declaring its fidelity to the Event. In this respect, truth is not subjective, as it emerges from the Void of the situation, but rather the subject is a subject to the Truth of the Event (Žižek 1999). In the same vein, Lacan posits that the subject ‘retains an irreducible relation to truth’ which is singular and unique to the subject (Hallward 2003: 12). Another point of convergence, Hallward continues, is the adherence that both Lacan and Badiou retain to the undeniable relation of mathematics to the real. It is here that both theorists conceptualise the real as not encompassing any inherent structure, but rather that it emerges through the subject and its encounter with the truth. For Badiou, the real is a static element embedded within the unpredictable framework of the situation, and as Žižek (1999: 141) rightly puts it, ‘an event is the traumatic encounter with the real’. For Lacan, on the other hand, the real is dynamic and can be expressed through the suspension of the Imaginary and Symbolic order. The real is precisely which shatters the Symbolic order and inhabits the space between them. Thus it is the inconsistency between Badiou’s pure multiple that equates to Lacan’s real (Žižek 1999). In this sense, the real is the formless space or existence which is manifest in the excess of the Symbolic order and that of the Truth-Event.
Lastly, the real for Baudrillard, is that which has been precisely fragmented in the postmodern condition. The real endures a transition in which it becomes subject to representation and signification in modernity. With postmodernity, however, the sign and the symbol mature from representation of the real to the real or hyperreal. Thus what emerges is the simulation of the real by the imaginary or the symbolic, to which we become engrossed in a world of hyperreality where the ‘real from which all meaning and charm, all depth and energy of representation have vanished in a hallucinatory resemblance’ (Baudrillard 1981; 15). Baudrillard’s real is that which is always manifest in the reflection of an image. That is to say, the real is never experienced first-hand but undergoes attenuation through representation.
Comparing Baudrillard with Lacan and Badiou, we can see how the real is always theorised as that which is below the surface, which is never directly perceptible. In the case of Lacan, the real order is that which emerges as a sort of neurosis, a trauma so to speak. The real can be regarded in the same fashion for Badiou, whose Truth-Event represents ‘the intrusion of the traumatic real that shatters the predominant symbolic texture’ (Žižek 1991: 147). Thus to conclude, the symbolic and simulation are what appear to cushion us from the profundity of the real that manifests itself at the foundation of our existences but which we must be continuously shielded from.
References
Badiou, A., 2003. St. Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Badiou, A., 2005. Being and Event. London: Continuum.
Baudrillard, J., 1981. Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan University Press.
Hallward, P., 2003. Badiou: A Subject to Truth. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Lacan, J., 1975. On Feminine Sexuality the Limits of Love and Knowledge. London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Žižek, S., 1999. The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.
neo-liberalism
Neo-liberalism is a maturated version of liberalism which is a rational art of governance that ruled Western Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Liberalism is characterised by its application of the natural laws of the market as a fundamental framework of state governance. For liberals the economic market is perceived as a wholly natural self-regulating phenomenon that reflects truth, unlike politics which can be simply reduced to mere rhetoric. Thus the market becomes the cornerstone of the political system and adheres to the natural rules of the economy. In this regard the market regulates the state. Foucault calls this the Regime of Veridiction, whereby the truth and law of the market regulate the state. This liberal art of governance, he continues, bestows its subjects with a form of utilitarian freedom that declares freedom not as something naturally inherent and possessed by individuals, but rather an independence of the governed from the governors. This type of freedom manifests itself within the natural laws of the market and grants individuals liberty from direct state control. Simply stated in market terms, individuals’ freedom of consumption yields their freedom of production. However, this freedom of the market comes at the price of the necessary regulation and security from fraud and other threats. Thus freedom is allocated amid limitations and regulations that inevitably hinder it. Further, as Foucault states, the panopticon becomes a vital aspect of this limitation through supervision and surveillance; and as a result ‘this liberalism is not so much the imperative of freedom as the management and organisation of the conditions in which one can be free ... [but rather]... risks limiting and destroying it’ (2008: 63-4).
Liberalism is defined by its laissez-faire approach to market regulation as it is believed that the market economy reflects truth according to natural laws and only limited regulation of the market is necessary. Neo-liberalism, on the other hand, rejects this laissez-fair ideal, that the market should be left to its own “natural accord”, and instead posits that regulation for the market must become a priority. In this regard, neo-liberalism advocates regulatory policies, as outlined by Foucault, to bolster the market economy. Firstly, neo-liberals emphasise the importance of price stability over purchasing power or unemployment, adhering to the disposition that price stability will inevitably advance purchasing power and create employment. Secondly, actions must be undertaken on the framework of the market economy and this becomes an imperative mission. In this sense, regulations, technical advancements and other interventions at the structural level are performed to increase market potential. Lastly, neo-liberalism advocates social policy, in the loosest sense, as a means of maintaining the bare minimum for those who cannot engage in the market economy. Thus welfare provisions are reduced to the essentials simply to maintain a standard of living defined by the state. In addition, the privatisation of social policy is ensured as a means to motivate those unable to afford it to join in the competitive hubbub of the market economy; ironically coined “The Social Market Economy”.
Neo-liberalism’s departure from liberalism continues with its commission to colonise all arenas of life with this market economy rationality of competition, calculation and enterprise. Brown (2003) argues that neo-liberalism conflates moral actions with rational actions by ‘configuring morality entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits and consequences’. And it is within a neo-liberal political economy where we see a proliferation of homo oeconomicus, which Foucault declares is no longer the subject of consumption but rather of competition and production. Thus the consequences of when market economy rationality becomes embedded in every aspect of life are not that humans become reduced simply to their labour power, as in previous critiques, but that they are valued on their human capital and become avenues of investment. Life as a consequence becomes reduced to a competitive acquisition of capital in the form of education, work, worldly experiences and even social interactions. These avenues simply become converted into capital “points” that can be exchanged for monetary capital in the marketplace. And, as Harvey (2007) points out, failure to succeed in the neo-liberal market economy is attributed solely to a lack of human capital assets.
The all pervasive rationality of neo-liberalism that penetrates us through commonplace media rhetoric to full-fledged ideologies perpetuated by politicians and powerful elites alike is what makes this art of governance particularly successful. Neo-liberalist rhetoric drives normative beliefs about the practices and functions of this rationality and is reinforced by major institutions and policy (Brown 2003). What maintains this full-fledged ideological imperialism is precisely the way in which ideals such as freedom, liberty and democracy have been latched onto the neo-liberalist agenda. These ideals of personal freedom and liberty have been conflated with those of freedom of trade and the market, sardonically illustrated in a statement quoted by Harvey of an Iraqi member of the Coalition Provisional Alliance dissenting neo-liberalist policy calling it a ‘forced imposition of “free market fundamentalism”’ (2007: 4). Freedom is the penchant of neo-liberalism but in actuality this freedom is paradoxical in its nature. This freedom we are granted in a neo-liberal political economy grants us with endless avenues of enrichment and ultimately in accumulating human capital. The freedom of choice and limitlessness of direction is fundamentally transparent; the high prices for education, privatisation of health services and selectivity of the housing ladder spell out a more honest picture of what is actually inaccessible without human capital. Secondly, neo-liberalist policies and regulations are in many instances blatantly anti-democratic. As Brown demonstrates, ‘democratic values and institutions are trumped by a cost-benefit and efficiency rationale for practices ranging from government secrecy ... to the curtailment of civil liberties’ and, she continues, neo-liberalist subjects ‘are controlled through their freedom’ (2003). Lastly, the freedom to choose to join the neo-liberal market economy or simply to opt out of it, is in many circumstances not an option; and in some cases this may be regarded as subversive and a threat to the stability and security of the state. The difficulty in removing oneself from this “system” is precisely why it works; because as Harvey argues, neo-liberalism is a politics that aims to restore class powers and thus ‘this [class] unevenness must be understood as something actively produced and sustained by processes of capital accumulation’ (2007: 23).
References
Brown, W., 2003. Neo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy. Theory and Event, 7(1).
Foucault, M., 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-79. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harvey, D., 2007. Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610(1), pp.21–44.
Liberalism is defined by its laissez-faire approach to market regulation as it is believed that the market economy reflects truth according to natural laws and only limited regulation of the market is necessary. Neo-liberalism, on the other hand, rejects this laissez-fair ideal, that the market should be left to its own “natural accord”, and instead posits that regulation for the market must become a priority. In this regard, neo-liberalism advocates regulatory policies, as outlined by Foucault, to bolster the market economy. Firstly, neo-liberals emphasise the importance of price stability over purchasing power or unemployment, adhering to the disposition that price stability will inevitably advance purchasing power and create employment. Secondly, actions must be undertaken on the framework of the market economy and this becomes an imperative mission. In this sense, regulations, technical advancements and other interventions at the structural level are performed to increase market potential. Lastly, neo-liberalism advocates social policy, in the loosest sense, as a means of maintaining the bare minimum for those who cannot engage in the market economy. Thus welfare provisions are reduced to the essentials simply to maintain a standard of living defined by the state. In addition, the privatisation of social policy is ensured as a means to motivate those unable to afford it to join in the competitive hubbub of the market economy; ironically coined “The Social Market Economy”.
Neo-liberalism’s departure from liberalism continues with its commission to colonise all arenas of life with this market economy rationality of competition, calculation and enterprise. Brown (2003) argues that neo-liberalism conflates moral actions with rational actions by ‘configuring morality entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about costs, benefits and consequences’. And it is within a neo-liberal political economy where we see a proliferation of homo oeconomicus, which Foucault declares is no longer the subject of consumption but rather of competition and production. Thus the consequences of when market economy rationality becomes embedded in every aspect of life are not that humans become reduced simply to their labour power, as in previous critiques, but that they are valued on their human capital and become avenues of investment. Life as a consequence becomes reduced to a competitive acquisition of capital in the form of education, work, worldly experiences and even social interactions. These avenues simply become converted into capital “points” that can be exchanged for monetary capital in the marketplace. And, as Harvey (2007) points out, failure to succeed in the neo-liberal market economy is attributed solely to a lack of human capital assets.
The all pervasive rationality of neo-liberalism that penetrates us through commonplace media rhetoric to full-fledged ideologies perpetuated by politicians and powerful elites alike is what makes this art of governance particularly successful. Neo-liberalist rhetoric drives normative beliefs about the practices and functions of this rationality and is reinforced by major institutions and policy (Brown 2003). What maintains this full-fledged ideological imperialism is precisely the way in which ideals such as freedom, liberty and democracy have been latched onto the neo-liberalist agenda. These ideals of personal freedom and liberty have been conflated with those of freedom of trade and the market, sardonically illustrated in a statement quoted by Harvey of an Iraqi member of the Coalition Provisional Alliance dissenting neo-liberalist policy calling it a ‘forced imposition of “free market fundamentalism”’ (2007: 4). Freedom is the penchant of neo-liberalism but in actuality this freedom is paradoxical in its nature. This freedom we are granted in a neo-liberal political economy grants us with endless avenues of enrichment and ultimately in accumulating human capital. The freedom of choice and limitlessness of direction is fundamentally transparent; the high prices for education, privatisation of health services and selectivity of the housing ladder spell out a more honest picture of what is actually inaccessible without human capital. Secondly, neo-liberalist policies and regulations are in many instances blatantly anti-democratic. As Brown demonstrates, ‘democratic values and institutions are trumped by a cost-benefit and efficiency rationale for practices ranging from government secrecy ... to the curtailment of civil liberties’ and, she continues, neo-liberalist subjects ‘are controlled through their freedom’ (2003). Lastly, the freedom to choose to join the neo-liberal market economy or simply to opt out of it, is in many circumstances not an option; and in some cases this may be regarded as subversive and a threat to the stability and security of the state. The difficulty in removing oneself from this “system” is precisely why it works; because as Harvey argues, neo-liberalism is a politics that aims to restore class powers and thus ‘this [class] unevenness must be understood as something actively produced and sustained by processes of capital accumulation’ (2007: 23).
References
Brown, W., 2003. Neo-Liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy. Theory and Event, 7(1).
Foucault, M., 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-79. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harvey, D., 2007. Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610(1), pp.21–44.
photographs that hurt
‘Nothing of what is called inhuman... is beyond man.’ - Jorge Semprun
‘To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell's flames.’ - Susan Sontag
Photography is premeditated. There is thus a thought process and an intention behind every photograph and taking a photograph always implies the framing of one thing and cutting out of another. Photographs capture moments of action to the fraction of a second and fragment our world into bite-sized segments. In this respect, images of pain, suffering and destruction are among the most morally binding. Questions arise as to how a photographer can stand there, watch and record such horrible atrocities; or whether the images we receive are framed for impact and distort the reality and simplify the complexity of the situation. Viewers of photography are not unaware of the disturbing imagery that floods newspapers, magazines, television sets, photography books and museum walls; and such images of warfare, famine and extreme poverty, many viewers will seldom experience first-hand. This raises questions as to whom the photographs are aimed for and the reasons why they are captured and displayed publicly. What use values do these images of pain and suffering actually have within the larger frame of knowledge that such atrocities continue to occur despite the long history of documenting them?
Part I
Photography has aided in making the world feel increasingly small, where exotic far-away lands and cultures become ever more near and familiar (Sontag 1977; 2003). In this sense photography has been dubbed the democratic enterprise that enables the masses to gain a hold on the means of production. The democratisation of photography has created a situation in which everyone has the opportunity to photograph and be photographed. In addition to this, photography sets itself apart from painting through its ability to transcend representation and forge a new territory, that of actualization. This characteristic of photography has allowed for it to maintain itself at the forefront of documentation, carrying with it the implicit notion of capturing objectivity and truth. This, however, is highly contested and debated. And whether an objective truth or reality really does exist ‘out there’ is fundamental to understanding the role of the photographic enterprise, especially documentary photography and photojournalism. For many post-modern theorists, the conceptualisation of an objective reality is widely agreed to be false and misleading. Thus for photojournalists and documentarians this poses many issues for those dedicated to remaining unbiased and objective throughout the process. For artist Renzo Martens, this is an issue that cannot be bypassed, as he argues that the modes of documentation always mimic modes of oppression (discussion, 29 March 2011). Hence one cannot remove themselves from the essential framework and systems in which they belong, and for those who attempt to escape from it by producing objectivity only further reproduce it through covert means. In this sense, aspects of subjectivity are inevitable and should be utilized and integrated into the documentation process. Linfield furthers this notion by positing that photographs are, ‘objective and subjective, found and made, dead and alive, withholding and revealing’ (2010: 237). Undeniably, photography does possess these incongruous characteristics that appear to bestow it with a magical quality that surpasses what we know as reality. Similarly Sontag (2003) has also come to recognise photography as the objective capturing of reality and the subjective interpretation of the photographer. In this sense, the fluidity of truth and reality becomes fused within the framework of subjectivity; and construction must thus be recognised as manifest within all documentary photography.
This contestation that photographs simultaneously contain objective and subjective information is especially lucrative and allows us, as viewers, to retain the notion of a photograph’s almost supernatural ability to reveal a reality below the perceptible surface, or as Benjamin puts it: ‘makes [us] aware for the first time the optical unconscious, just as psychoanalysis discloses the instinctual unconscious’ (1972; 7). Photography as a revealer of clandestine truths may be more of a sentimental notion, similar to that of Barthes’ almost wishful thinking when viewing his mother’s photograph after her death. However, this enchanting quality or sentimentality of photography appears to be what keeps us entranced by images regardless of our beliefs in a hidden reality. In this regard, Benjamin’s may be an overstatement; there is however, a certain collective consciousness that one can argue has developed throughout the photographic enterprise. This consciousness is the elemental aspect that indeed links together all types of photography; whereby ‘all photographs are in some sense about photography; everything one sees or makes to be seen is both self-referential and an element of the larger world to which the clues are more or less obvious’ (Price 1994; 34). Hence, photography is the communal enterprise of taking pictures and the subsequent use and distribution of them. In this sense all types of photography (journalistic, sports, scientific, etc.) become referred back to one another as aspects of our material culture.
Drawing upon this understanding, we can investigate more thoroughly how the production and use of images, specifically of suffering captured by photographers may relay back within the wider photographic enterprise and within the political and social contexts they emerge from. Ariel Azoulay (2008), whose work centres around the imagery being produced from the Israel-Palestine conflict, proposes the notion of a separate and distinct photographic realm which inhabits its own unique space of political relations ‘that are not mediated exclusively by the ruling power of the state and are not completely subject to the national logic that still overshadows the familiar political arena’ (12). This she terms the civil political space. Hence photography becomes a global community free from the state and within this space dictates its own exceptions. The circulation and distribution of photography does indeed occur outside of the control and power of most governing bodies (Didi-Huberman 2003) and mimics this photographic community external to sovereign command posited by Azoulay.
Reiterating a point from above, the viewer in most instances cannot relate to many of the images of pain and suffering from first-hand experience and frankly may never be able to. And as Sontag points out, this distance between the perceiver and the perceived gives this kind of imagery its surrealist quality. Essentially, all photography maintains a surrealist quality about it, by making foreign objects near and familiar, and conversely by transforming familiar objects into foreign and distant ones (Sontag 1977). Hence in both instances there is a distance that remains intact between the viewer and the subject. This notion of surrealism within photography appears to reoccur particularly within the context of images of pain and suffering as the spatial, temporal and social distances are major factors influencing the way in which we perceive and respond to these images. However, the ability of these images to carry surrealist qualities do not ease the viewing of such distressing images and the distance becomes ever more complex as we invest ourselves in them. We, in this context is a problematic concept, and reoccurs throughout the discussion of photography; particularly within photography that hinges upon a sense of moral responsibility. Who are we who view photography of this kind? Are these photographs made for those of relative privilege living predominantly in politically and economically stable societies where violent atrocities are not common aspects of life? Is this kind of photography a commodity that begs to be bought and sold? And again for what purpose does it serve? What are the limits of this kind of photography? Where can one draw the line between those images of pain and suffering that do indeed serve a ‘greater good’ and those which are simply pornographic, sensationalist and exploitative?
In a comic yet astutely executed scene from the show The Sarah Silverman Program (2007), Sarah is confronted by imagery of suffering whilst watching television. The images are distressing. A child living with leukaemia, struggling to walk, lying in a hospital bed, pale and sickly; along with the plea: ‘These are children that are dying [...] these disturbing images don’t have to be real, you can make them disappear with just a few dollars’. Sarah, disconcerted by this imagery, hurriedly tries to change the channel only to discover that her remote control has failed to work, and is subsequently forced to endure the advertisement ‘for the next 36-hours’. Finally, she realises that the commentator is correct and to help relieve her anxiety, she makes the images disappear by covering the entire television screen with dollar bills; agreeing that indeed, her money has solved the problem. This sketch evidently illustrates the way in which images of pain and suffering are utilised as means of provoking visceral emotions in the viewer, and creating a sense of urgency and necessity. In many cases the photographs exorcise intense reactions that are self-motivated to relieve the anxiety or grief caused by the images. What is also so poignantly portrayed is the capacity one has to simply switch off or look away, or in Sarah’s case to physically obscure the image from view. By looking at photographs we simultaneously maintain the agency simply not to look. In this sense, we possess the ability to increase our distance from the photograph and conceptualise it is as purely surreal. Regardless of our agency, it is maintained that images do have the power to burn into our memories and consciousness and the complication arises when we begin to ask ourselves: what these images demand from us as viewers and subsequently as consumers of pain and suffering? Because as Linfield lays claim, ‘the history of photography also shows just how limited and inadequate such exposure is: seeing does not necessarily translate to believing, caring, or acting. That is the dialectic, and the failure, at the heart of the photograph of suffering’ (2010: 33).
Part II
Photographs are made up of three components, in Barthes’ (2000) terms: the Operator, Spectator, and Spectrum. The operator refers to the photographer, that who manipulates the camera and in some cases the environment or situation in order to capture the desired image. The spectator refers to those who view photographic images, whilst the spectrum is the subject of the photograph, the captured object or people. Barthes’ intention in referring to the subject as the spectrum is in reference to the root word: spectacle. The role of each of these elements are particularly important in understanding the use-value of photographs and also the wider context in which some photographs are taken and circulated over others. The photographer as operator infers a sense of control and manipulation. Operating upon their subjects like a surgeon on a patient. The operator’s only contact with the subject is through the wielding of an apparatus, penetrating them from a distance. This distance between the operator and spectrum is mimicked by the distance, touched upon above, between that of the spectrum and spectator. For the operator, the physical distance can never be overcome, however much one may beg to oppose this through embedded photojournalism or by even removing the otherness of the photographer, in instances where the subjects of photography themselves are given cameras to capture ‘their own reality’. The distance here is inherent in the photographic process and resides within the camera when it is physically placed in between two parties.
Again we return to Martens statement about the inevitability of the reproduction of oppression through the process of documentation. It is indeed problematic for both documentary filmmakers and photojournalists to escape the systems from which they emerge and the normative frameworks with which their work must abide. In particular, within both practices, there is a desire to produce a coherent visual narrative that guides the viewer throughout the images. What is challenging about this is the way in which a narrative becomes imposed upon an event or situation. Inherently within this process one is forced to decide between what information to include and which to exclude. Here the event becomes framed within a structure that is familiar to the filmmaker, journalist, or a larger institutional body that dictates how it becomes framed. Hence the event becomes reproduced within the same means of production that engender certain forms of oppression. Butler (2005) provides some examples of how embedded reporting from the War in Iraq has been confined within the limits of an American ideological perspective. With respect to the images and reporting coming from the frontline, not only has it been dictated what is ‘appropriate’ to be photographed and subsequently circulated, this framework also undoubtedly defines and restricts what is deemed unsuitable to be photographed and published within mainstream media. Butler extends this, stating that:
We can even say that the political consciousness that moves the photographer to accept those restrictions and yield the compliant photograph is embedded in the frame itself. We do not have to have a caption or a narrative at work to understand that a political background is being explicitly formulated and renewed through the frame. In this sense, the frame takes part in the interpretation of the war compelled by the state; it is not just a visual image awaiting its interpretation; it is itself interpreting, actively, even forcibly (2005; 823).
Butler here is contesting Sontag’s belief that a photograph only frames and that it is in need of greater contextual information in order to read the image appropriately. The question behind these photographs must thus become who is operating the production of these images? That will enable us to comprehend the frame that may be imposed upon the photograph and the accompanying contextual use. Framing thus becomes the most vital application for the photographer, with a successful photographer being able to visualise the best frame for the situation or event, to elicit the strongest narrative and emotions. Which is why, as pointed out by Sontag (2003), many of the most poignant and iconic images of the century that seem to carry weight due to their visual significance have actually been staged by the photographer or subject. What becomes most surprising about these revelations is the sense of disappointment and shame from viewers who feel as though a photojournalist’s role is to capture truth and reality as it occurs, rather than creating a fabricated or dramatised interpretation of the event. This false expectation of an untainted truth or reality may actually be where the furore surrounding images of cruelty and torment originate. The expectations of photographic images appear to oscillate between two extremes (Didi-Huberman 2003). On the one hand, there is the expectation that photographs will provide an all-seeing sort of revelation about the ‘truth’ of the situation. Conversely, the expectation is that photography reveals nothing and only remains within ‘the sphere of the simulacrum’ (33).
Amid both expectations, the photographing of pain and suffering and the subsequent aestheticisation of these images become morally binding for viewers who hold these expectations of photojournalism. Can the ugly and disturbing truth of the event ever really be beautiful or breathtaking? Or is this imagery simply profiting on the pain and suffering of others by turning them into objects of visual pleasure? The exhibition entitled Beautiful Suffering, with a book published of the same, examined the key concepts and debates surrounding the aestheticisation and moral implications of images of suffering; and raised some thought provoking insights about the uses of this kind of photography as news information and other forms of commodities. Photography, it is contended, is bestowed with an almost blinding trust which:
Harbour[s] diverse illusions and excuses - for example, that the viewer need look no further to understand distant events; that structural violence requires only a personal emotional response; that the represented pain or calamity has already been resolved and can therefore be dismissed; or that addressing the problem is the privilege or the perquisite of the viewer (2007; 8).
The spectator is wholly implicit within the debate over graphic photojournalism. What is our role as spectators and how is our presence an implicit factor in the production and consumption of these images? More importantly, however, most of these images are taken of people and calamities abroad in ‘less developed’ parts of the world but are created by and circulated among mainly those within the privileged social sphere, in ‘developed’ societies. This may appear a generalization, yet in fact there is little to claim otherwise. Mainstream American media outlets are particularly guilty of parading distressing images when pertaining to countries and circumstances abroad and less keen to invite this imagery when it pertains to devastating events on their soil or to their people (Butler 2005; Sontag 2003).
Photographs of pain and suffering urge us to acknowledge what is happening within the frame. They beg us to relate viscerally and as humans to those in the images. They teach us of the suffering, pain and torment that are ‘out there’ in the world. They call to us to recognise the fragility of life and the inevitable truth of death (Sontag 1977; 2003). This relation of photography to death is a commonplace topic of discussion and for Barthes in particular. He believes that the spectrum, the person being photographed, treads upon the knowledge of their certain death. In describing having his picture taken, he states, ‘I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis) : I am truly becoming a specter [sic]’ (2000; 14). Here the subject becomes a spectacle under the unremitting gaze of the spectator and in every picture the thought that looking into those eyes, the spectator holds the intimate knowledge that ‘you are going to die’ or even more chillingly ‘you have died’. Hence photographs of subjects pictured moments before death, such as the images of prisoners of the Khmer Rouge or those of Jews being round up in the Warsaw Ghettos, are ever the more poignant and disturbing. There is a vague sense that death is very near upon them and ever so present. Even if the subjects are truly unaware of their fate. There still appears a hint, amidst the fear and apprehension, of hope that the camera might be able to save their life; and if not in this one, then in the afterlife as a witness to the pain and suffering they have endured.
For the spectrum of the photograph, the camera and subsequent image produced becomes their unique testimony to the world. Even for those who may not openly consent to their image being taken, Azoulay (2008) insists that consent is implied within the terms of the civil contract of photography. Since the political space is free from state regulation, citizenship encompasses the global population of all those involved with photography at the level of: spectrum, spectator and operator. Hence she contends that for subjects within such photographs, inclusion in this community ‘offers an alternative [...] to the institutional structures that have abandoned and injured them’, and therefore ‘the consent of most photographed subjects to have their picture taken […] presumes the existence of a civil space in which photographers, photographed subjects, and spectators share a recognition that what they are witnessing is insufferable’ (18). This position raises questions as to the legitimacy of a so-called separate political space external to established sovereign state powers. In fact for many theorists, the photographic enterprise remains securely within the modes of normative production. Debord (1983) in particular maintains that the production of the spectacle is entirely contained by the means of production and reinforces class divisions. He argues that ‘the spectacle is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue [...] the self-portrait of power in the epoch of its totalitarian management of the conditions of existence’ (8). Thus the images that saturate one’s consciousness may appear different on the surface, but are instead replicas of the system in which they inhabit. As consequence they tend to reflect the viewer back upon themselves rather than the subjects captured within the frame. This is an oversimplification of the fact that indeed photography can enlighten viewers and create a sense of urgency that may in fact help to formulate novel conceptions of the world around them. Conversely though, one cannot simply comply with the idea that photography transcends the frameworks and systems that create this injustice in the first place. Instead the contextual data surrounding the photographic event becomes essential to understanding its role, along with the possible beneficial and damaging outcomes it carries.
Part III
Photography is endowed with a sense of trust and an all-knowing truth that reappears throughout discussions about it, Sontag (1977) states that ‘photographs – and quotations – seem, because they are taken to be pieces of reality, more authentic than extended literary narratives’ (74). Didi-Huberman (2003) declares that photographs are indeed, borrowing Arendt’s term, ‘instances of truths’ (31). Benjamin (1972), fearing that photography would become an arena in which textual information would lose out, was concerned that without a context a photograph could be infinitely read and that interpretation would reign supreme over the verification of truth. In fact, this threat to the authenticity of photography, tearing it away from context would indeed reveal the limitlessness of photographs. The malleability of photographic readings becomes evident within the larger context of information. For example, the majority of photographs taken by photojournalists may never make the cut into news publications. The images that are left out not only create a more coherent narrative of the event, imposed or otherwise, but also illustrate the grander scheme of rich information that can help one draw out a larger understanding of the selective images published. The captions may differ when an image of a dead Taliban soldier is printed in a nationwide American newspaper, to the one that may accompany it in an art gallery or photo book. Hence the framing of photography is not limited to the selectivity of composition and subject matter. Photographs becomes further framed with the text that accompanies them, within the larger context which they are presented and also the ways in which they may be retouched or cropped for emphasis on particularities within the image itself.
Photographs by the photojournalist and social documentarian Sebastião Salgado are stunningly beautiful and are regularly presented as images for visual pleasure through publication in coffee books or as exhibitions in art galleries. Conversely his images are renowned for their journalistic qualities of capturing social inequality, poverty and suffering. This grey area in which he occupies has given him a notorious status amongst critics who argue that his photography aestheticises pain and suffering rather than responsibly capturing the injustice. The argument materialises into a battle between the aesthetic and political realm, with the claim that they are mutually exclusive and that pain and suffering cannot be equally aesthetically appealing without jeopardising the struggle and demeaning the misery of those pictured. Salgado’s photo book Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age examines the physical toil and backbreaking labour of those in locations all across the world. His images are archetypal and are intended to reinstate dignity to the individuals pictured who he argues have become demeaned and exploited through the economic and social structures which keep them in their poverty. One of his most striking images in the book comes from the gold mines in Serra Pelada, Brazil and depicts the thousands of miners who work along the treacherously steep valleys (see plate 1). The people are indiscernibly human and look more like ants lined along an anthill. The subject in the foreground is a man resting with his back to the camera. His shirt is soaked through with mud and sweat. The folds in the shirt almost appear bronze-like akin to his skin tone. Upon first glance this image recalls an early iconic photograph of a slave’s back with uprooted scars from repeated lashings (see plate 2). The resemblance is striking. And even though the miner’s back is not scarred by whippings, it does not become unrealistic to believe that he may have similar scarring. What is most arresting about this image is the way in which Salgado has captured the slave-like labour he participates in and the slave-like repercussions he receives, without the need for any sensational jargon so-to-speak to grab our attention. In this sense the image does elicit a visceral response, one however that is more likely to entice viewers to seek beyond the image itself to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the situation. This should be the goal of all photojournalistic photography, to draw the viewer’s attention to the situation, but even further beyond what is pictured to the wider circumstances and politics that engender it. This weight on the image thus becomes shared between the contextual information that accompanies it: texts, discussions, other images, etc. With this in place, images without a context risk becoming simply objects of pleasure, spectacle and voyeuristic pursuits.
Plate 1 Plate 2
Sebastião Salgado. Gold miners of Serra Pelada, Brazil. 1993. Unknown. Scars of an escaped slave, US. 1863.
In his controversial documentary, Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty, Renzo Martens travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with one question ‘who owns poverty?’ Throughout his time in the Congo he meets international photojournalists making a living off of the images they capture of the conflict: raped women, malnourished children and the causalities of civil conflict. These photojournalists earn $50 per image and the photographs return to their international destinations never to be seen again in the Congo. Renzo attempts to help the Congolese take control of their poverty and gain access to the market by training local photographers to take images similar to those of the photojournalists. The images by the locals were subsequently rejected because they were deemed to be made with the intention of making money rather than making news. This emphasis on the intention or the merit of the photographer distorts the meaning of the image. How can an image solely be making news over another? Again, where is this threshold between sensationalist imagery and newsworthy imagery being drawn? This is precisely where one can witness the reproduction of modes of oppression within documentation; because what is considered documentation and newsworthy is restricted within the framework of the dominant power. Hence the limit is arbitrary and based solely on what is acceptable within the status quo.
A second pervasive issue raised by the film is that of the spectrum or the subject of the photographic gaze. Whist in the Congo, Martens visits a refugee camp alongside humanitarian workers who are providing aid and shelter to those displaced due to the civil conflict. The victims he witnesses become actors of poverty and take on the role of the helpless victim directly in front of the photojournalists’ lens and the humanitarian workers’ gaze. Their poverty is indeed a resource for them, but it also a resource for the NGOs and journalists. This co-dependent relationship is apparent in the obscene branding of the NGOs. With logos appearing on every item of aid, the question is, whose interests are the NGOs really serving? And it is here where photography of the pain and suffering of others becomes a mode of propaganda for both those in need and for the NGOs. For those suffering, the role they play in front of the camera dictates whether or not their plight will be recognized and supported. At the same time, for aid organisations, the visibility of their logos overseas is what ensures that they will be recognized and supported.
‘How do you make the unseen seen?’ (Peress cited in Linfield 2010; 258). Photography as a medium inherently makes something visible. The camera itself is endowed with the authority to show. If it is photographed then therefore it must be of some importance or value. The documentary Bus 174 reflects upon the ability of the camera to evoke a sense of importance, a sense of visibility and the troubling effects it has when it comes to representing violence through photography and video. The film recounts a day in Rio de Janeiro when a young man named Sandro hijacked a bus. Bus robberies are not uncommon among young people living on the streets as a means to get by, however, on this occasion, the robbery became a hijacking and a full-fledged media event. Photographers and news reporters flocked to the scene before the police and within minutes the event became broadcast live across the country. The event began in the afternoon and was over by dusk and resulted in the death of one passenger and Sandro himself. The culprit was a young man who became an orphan after his mother’s brutal murder and subsequently was forced to live on the streets. For most of the street children living in Rio and across Brazil their ‘greatest battle is against invisibility’.
This invisibility happens in two different ways: the child is invisible because his presence is ignored, he’s looked down on, or because we stigmatize him and only see a caricature. [And] when we project our prejudices onto someone, we cancel out and destroy what makes that person unique. We only see what we project onto him, a caricature, our own prejudices (Bus 174, 2002).
Thus for Sandro the presence of the multitude of video cameras and a vast audiences across the country was his moment of visibility. During this brief moment of notoriety, the camera had given him what society had never given him his entire life. The presence of the cameras throughout the event gave more power to Sandro, whilst paralysing the police’s actions (Hamburger 2008). Additionally, the presence of the camera elicited a role for Sandro to play that was almost expected of him. During the first hours of the incident Sandro is reluctant to be filmed and conceals himself from view. Eventually, he begins to take on the role of the victim-turned-villain brandishing his weapon and making threats directly into the camera and his act becomes increasingly dramatised as the afternoon unfolds. Thus the camera as a means of making him visible had rendered him a caricature of himself in which he was stuck. For Sandro, the cameras were his last shred of hope. ‘At the centre of this media event, Sandro enacted a reversed version of Foucault’s panopticon - he had the eyes of the world upon him’ (Hamburger 2008; 9). As long as the cameras were rolling, Sandro would remain alive and visible to everyone who watched. Shortly after his surrendered, he was hauled into a police van and under the supervision of no cameras. He was strangled and murdered.
Photographs of other people’s pain and suffering inherently carry with them a moral responsibility. Looking at a photograph of someone enduring the physical and mental distresses of war, famine or poverty is almost akin to a plea to be recognised and acknowledged; a cry to be heard, to be seen and to be saved. All photographs of such ask the viewer to take note of the atrocious event taking place, to remember the victims and to punish the perpetrators. These images call for us as viewers to look beyond the image and to ‘stop looking at the photograph and instead start watching it’ (Azoulay 2008; 14). Thus we must examine the image as a moment in time and space and part of a wider context. We must reflect anthropologically on the use and circumstances of specific images, and the intentions within the larger photographic enterprise (Didi-Huberman 2003). Where one draws the limit between sensationalist, pornographic photographs and those that are informative and empowering is ultimately arbitrary and again is a reflection of the image-maker and consumers’ ideological and normative frameworks. The market for images of pain and suffering will not die down. Wherever there is conflict there will be a photographer to document it. The only concrete thing these images can attest to is that human beings do indeed carry out atrocious acts of violence on fellow humans, and the endless stream of images only proves that it ceases to end.
References
Azoulay, A., 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Barthes, R., 2000. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage Books.
Benjamin, W., 1972. A Short History of Photography. Screen, 13(1), pp.5-26.
Bus 174. 2002. [DVD] Directed by José Padilha and Felipe Lacerda. Brazil: Zazen Produções.
Butler, J., 2005. Photography, War, Outrage. Modern Language Association: Theories and Methodologies, 120(3), pp.822-27.
Debord, G., 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red.
Didi-Huberman, G., 2003. Images in Spite of all: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty. 2009. [DVD] Directed by Renzo Martens. Netherlands.
Hamburger, E. I., 2008. Performance, Television and Film: Bus 174 as a Perverse Case of Appropriation of the Means of Constructing Spectacular Audiovisual Form. Observatorio Journal, 2(7), pp.1-11.
Linfield, S., 2010. The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Martens, R., 2011. Episode Three: Enjoy Poverty Q & A session. [discussion] (29 March 2011).
Price, M., 1994. The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Reinhardt, M., Edwards, H., Duganne, E. Eds., 2007. Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Salgado, S., 1993. Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. London: Phaidon.
Sontag, S., 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin.
Sontag, S., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York, NY: Picador.
The Sarah Silverman Program. 2007. [DVD] New York: Comedy Central.
‘To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell's flames.’ - Susan Sontag
Photography is premeditated. There is thus a thought process and an intention behind every photograph and taking a photograph always implies the framing of one thing and cutting out of another. Photographs capture moments of action to the fraction of a second and fragment our world into bite-sized segments. In this respect, images of pain, suffering and destruction are among the most morally binding. Questions arise as to how a photographer can stand there, watch and record such horrible atrocities; or whether the images we receive are framed for impact and distort the reality and simplify the complexity of the situation. Viewers of photography are not unaware of the disturbing imagery that floods newspapers, magazines, television sets, photography books and museum walls; and such images of warfare, famine and extreme poverty, many viewers will seldom experience first-hand. This raises questions as to whom the photographs are aimed for and the reasons why they are captured and displayed publicly. What use values do these images of pain and suffering actually have within the larger frame of knowledge that such atrocities continue to occur despite the long history of documenting them?
Part I
Photography has aided in making the world feel increasingly small, where exotic far-away lands and cultures become ever more near and familiar (Sontag 1977; 2003). In this sense photography has been dubbed the democratic enterprise that enables the masses to gain a hold on the means of production. The democratisation of photography has created a situation in which everyone has the opportunity to photograph and be photographed. In addition to this, photography sets itself apart from painting through its ability to transcend representation and forge a new territory, that of actualization. This characteristic of photography has allowed for it to maintain itself at the forefront of documentation, carrying with it the implicit notion of capturing objectivity and truth. This, however, is highly contested and debated. And whether an objective truth or reality really does exist ‘out there’ is fundamental to understanding the role of the photographic enterprise, especially documentary photography and photojournalism. For many post-modern theorists, the conceptualisation of an objective reality is widely agreed to be false and misleading. Thus for photojournalists and documentarians this poses many issues for those dedicated to remaining unbiased and objective throughout the process. For artist Renzo Martens, this is an issue that cannot be bypassed, as he argues that the modes of documentation always mimic modes of oppression (discussion, 29 March 2011). Hence one cannot remove themselves from the essential framework and systems in which they belong, and for those who attempt to escape from it by producing objectivity only further reproduce it through covert means. In this sense, aspects of subjectivity are inevitable and should be utilized and integrated into the documentation process. Linfield furthers this notion by positing that photographs are, ‘objective and subjective, found and made, dead and alive, withholding and revealing’ (2010: 237). Undeniably, photography does possess these incongruous characteristics that appear to bestow it with a magical quality that surpasses what we know as reality. Similarly Sontag (2003) has also come to recognise photography as the objective capturing of reality and the subjective interpretation of the photographer. In this sense, the fluidity of truth and reality becomes fused within the framework of subjectivity; and construction must thus be recognised as manifest within all documentary photography.
This contestation that photographs simultaneously contain objective and subjective information is especially lucrative and allows us, as viewers, to retain the notion of a photograph’s almost supernatural ability to reveal a reality below the perceptible surface, or as Benjamin puts it: ‘makes [us] aware for the first time the optical unconscious, just as psychoanalysis discloses the instinctual unconscious’ (1972; 7). Photography as a revealer of clandestine truths may be more of a sentimental notion, similar to that of Barthes’ almost wishful thinking when viewing his mother’s photograph after her death. However, this enchanting quality or sentimentality of photography appears to be what keeps us entranced by images regardless of our beliefs in a hidden reality. In this regard, Benjamin’s may be an overstatement; there is however, a certain collective consciousness that one can argue has developed throughout the photographic enterprise. This consciousness is the elemental aspect that indeed links together all types of photography; whereby ‘all photographs are in some sense about photography; everything one sees or makes to be seen is both self-referential and an element of the larger world to which the clues are more or less obvious’ (Price 1994; 34). Hence, photography is the communal enterprise of taking pictures and the subsequent use and distribution of them. In this sense all types of photography (journalistic, sports, scientific, etc.) become referred back to one another as aspects of our material culture.
Drawing upon this understanding, we can investigate more thoroughly how the production and use of images, specifically of suffering captured by photographers may relay back within the wider photographic enterprise and within the political and social contexts they emerge from. Ariel Azoulay (2008), whose work centres around the imagery being produced from the Israel-Palestine conflict, proposes the notion of a separate and distinct photographic realm which inhabits its own unique space of political relations ‘that are not mediated exclusively by the ruling power of the state and are not completely subject to the national logic that still overshadows the familiar political arena’ (12). This she terms the civil political space. Hence photography becomes a global community free from the state and within this space dictates its own exceptions. The circulation and distribution of photography does indeed occur outside of the control and power of most governing bodies (Didi-Huberman 2003) and mimics this photographic community external to sovereign command posited by Azoulay.
Reiterating a point from above, the viewer in most instances cannot relate to many of the images of pain and suffering from first-hand experience and frankly may never be able to. And as Sontag points out, this distance between the perceiver and the perceived gives this kind of imagery its surrealist quality. Essentially, all photography maintains a surrealist quality about it, by making foreign objects near and familiar, and conversely by transforming familiar objects into foreign and distant ones (Sontag 1977). Hence in both instances there is a distance that remains intact between the viewer and the subject. This notion of surrealism within photography appears to reoccur particularly within the context of images of pain and suffering as the spatial, temporal and social distances are major factors influencing the way in which we perceive and respond to these images. However, the ability of these images to carry surrealist qualities do not ease the viewing of such distressing images and the distance becomes ever more complex as we invest ourselves in them. We, in this context is a problematic concept, and reoccurs throughout the discussion of photography; particularly within photography that hinges upon a sense of moral responsibility. Who are we who view photography of this kind? Are these photographs made for those of relative privilege living predominantly in politically and economically stable societies where violent atrocities are not common aspects of life? Is this kind of photography a commodity that begs to be bought and sold? And again for what purpose does it serve? What are the limits of this kind of photography? Where can one draw the line between those images of pain and suffering that do indeed serve a ‘greater good’ and those which are simply pornographic, sensationalist and exploitative?
In a comic yet astutely executed scene from the show The Sarah Silverman Program (2007), Sarah is confronted by imagery of suffering whilst watching television. The images are distressing. A child living with leukaemia, struggling to walk, lying in a hospital bed, pale and sickly; along with the plea: ‘These are children that are dying [...] these disturbing images don’t have to be real, you can make them disappear with just a few dollars’. Sarah, disconcerted by this imagery, hurriedly tries to change the channel only to discover that her remote control has failed to work, and is subsequently forced to endure the advertisement ‘for the next 36-hours’. Finally, she realises that the commentator is correct and to help relieve her anxiety, she makes the images disappear by covering the entire television screen with dollar bills; agreeing that indeed, her money has solved the problem. This sketch evidently illustrates the way in which images of pain and suffering are utilised as means of provoking visceral emotions in the viewer, and creating a sense of urgency and necessity. In many cases the photographs exorcise intense reactions that are self-motivated to relieve the anxiety or grief caused by the images. What is also so poignantly portrayed is the capacity one has to simply switch off or look away, or in Sarah’s case to physically obscure the image from view. By looking at photographs we simultaneously maintain the agency simply not to look. In this sense, we possess the ability to increase our distance from the photograph and conceptualise it is as purely surreal. Regardless of our agency, it is maintained that images do have the power to burn into our memories and consciousness and the complication arises when we begin to ask ourselves: what these images demand from us as viewers and subsequently as consumers of pain and suffering? Because as Linfield lays claim, ‘the history of photography also shows just how limited and inadequate such exposure is: seeing does not necessarily translate to believing, caring, or acting. That is the dialectic, and the failure, at the heart of the photograph of suffering’ (2010: 33).
Part II
Photographs are made up of three components, in Barthes’ (2000) terms: the Operator, Spectator, and Spectrum. The operator refers to the photographer, that who manipulates the camera and in some cases the environment or situation in order to capture the desired image. The spectator refers to those who view photographic images, whilst the spectrum is the subject of the photograph, the captured object or people. Barthes’ intention in referring to the subject as the spectrum is in reference to the root word: spectacle. The role of each of these elements are particularly important in understanding the use-value of photographs and also the wider context in which some photographs are taken and circulated over others. The photographer as operator infers a sense of control and manipulation. Operating upon their subjects like a surgeon on a patient. The operator’s only contact with the subject is through the wielding of an apparatus, penetrating them from a distance. This distance between the operator and spectrum is mimicked by the distance, touched upon above, between that of the spectrum and spectator. For the operator, the physical distance can never be overcome, however much one may beg to oppose this through embedded photojournalism or by even removing the otherness of the photographer, in instances where the subjects of photography themselves are given cameras to capture ‘their own reality’. The distance here is inherent in the photographic process and resides within the camera when it is physically placed in between two parties.
Again we return to Martens statement about the inevitability of the reproduction of oppression through the process of documentation. It is indeed problematic for both documentary filmmakers and photojournalists to escape the systems from which they emerge and the normative frameworks with which their work must abide. In particular, within both practices, there is a desire to produce a coherent visual narrative that guides the viewer throughout the images. What is challenging about this is the way in which a narrative becomes imposed upon an event or situation. Inherently within this process one is forced to decide between what information to include and which to exclude. Here the event becomes framed within a structure that is familiar to the filmmaker, journalist, or a larger institutional body that dictates how it becomes framed. Hence the event becomes reproduced within the same means of production that engender certain forms of oppression. Butler (2005) provides some examples of how embedded reporting from the War in Iraq has been confined within the limits of an American ideological perspective. With respect to the images and reporting coming from the frontline, not only has it been dictated what is ‘appropriate’ to be photographed and subsequently circulated, this framework also undoubtedly defines and restricts what is deemed unsuitable to be photographed and published within mainstream media. Butler extends this, stating that:
We can even say that the political consciousness that moves the photographer to accept those restrictions and yield the compliant photograph is embedded in the frame itself. We do not have to have a caption or a narrative at work to understand that a political background is being explicitly formulated and renewed through the frame. In this sense, the frame takes part in the interpretation of the war compelled by the state; it is not just a visual image awaiting its interpretation; it is itself interpreting, actively, even forcibly (2005; 823).
Butler here is contesting Sontag’s belief that a photograph only frames and that it is in need of greater contextual information in order to read the image appropriately. The question behind these photographs must thus become who is operating the production of these images? That will enable us to comprehend the frame that may be imposed upon the photograph and the accompanying contextual use. Framing thus becomes the most vital application for the photographer, with a successful photographer being able to visualise the best frame for the situation or event, to elicit the strongest narrative and emotions. Which is why, as pointed out by Sontag (2003), many of the most poignant and iconic images of the century that seem to carry weight due to their visual significance have actually been staged by the photographer or subject. What becomes most surprising about these revelations is the sense of disappointment and shame from viewers who feel as though a photojournalist’s role is to capture truth and reality as it occurs, rather than creating a fabricated or dramatised interpretation of the event. This false expectation of an untainted truth or reality may actually be where the furore surrounding images of cruelty and torment originate. The expectations of photographic images appear to oscillate between two extremes (Didi-Huberman 2003). On the one hand, there is the expectation that photographs will provide an all-seeing sort of revelation about the ‘truth’ of the situation. Conversely, the expectation is that photography reveals nothing and only remains within ‘the sphere of the simulacrum’ (33).
Amid both expectations, the photographing of pain and suffering and the subsequent aestheticisation of these images become morally binding for viewers who hold these expectations of photojournalism. Can the ugly and disturbing truth of the event ever really be beautiful or breathtaking? Or is this imagery simply profiting on the pain and suffering of others by turning them into objects of visual pleasure? The exhibition entitled Beautiful Suffering, with a book published of the same, examined the key concepts and debates surrounding the aestheticisation and moral implications of images of suffering; and raised some thought provoking insights about the uses of this kind of photography as news information and other forms of commodities. Photography, it is contended, is bestowed with an almost blinding trust which:
Harbour[s] diverse illusions and excuses - for example, that the viewer need look no further to understand distant events; that structural violence requires only a personal emotional response; that the represented pain or calamity has already been resolved and can therefore be dismissed; or that addressing the problem is the privilege or the perquisite of the viewer (2007; 8).
The spectator is wholly implicit within the debate over graphic photojournalism. What is our role as spectators and how is our presence an implicit factor in the production and consumption of these images? More importantly, however, most of these images are taken of people and calamities abroad in ‘less developed’ parts of the world but are created by and circulated among mainly those within the privileged social sphere, in ‘developed’ societies. This may appear a generalization, yet in fact there is little to claim otherwise. Mainstream American media outlets are particularly guilty of parading distressing images when pertaining to countries and circumstances abroad and less keen to invite this imagery when it pertains to devastating events on their soil or to their people (Butler 2005; Sontag 2003).
Photographs of pain and suffering urge us to acknowledge what is happening within the frame. They beg us to relate viscerally and as humans to those in the images. They teach us of the suffering, pain and torment that are ‘out there’ in the world. They call to us to recognise the fragility of life and the inevitable truth of death (Sontag 1977; 2003). This relation of photography to death is a commonplace topic of discussion and for Barthes in particular. He believes that the spectrum, the person being photographed, treads upon the knowledge of their certain death. In describing having his picture taken, he states, ‘I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis) : I am truly becoming a specter [sic]’ (2000; 14). Here the subject becomes a spectacle under the unremitting gaze of the spectator and in every picture the thought that looking into those eyes, the spectator holds the intimate knowledge that ‘you are going to die’ or even more chillingly ‘you have died’. Hence photographs of subjects pictured moments before death, such as the images of prisoners of the Khmer Rouge or those of Jews being round up in the Warsaw Ghettos, are ever the more poignant and disturbing. There is a vague sense that death is very near upon them and ever so present. Even if the subjects are truly unaware of their fate. There still appears a hint, amidst the fear and apprehension, of hope that the camera might be able to save their life; and if not in this one, then in the afterlife as a witness to the pain and suffering they have endured.
For the spectrum of the photograph, the camera and subsequent image produced becomes their unique testimony to the world. Even for those who may not openly consent to their image being taken, Azoulay (2008) insists that consent is implied within the terms of the civil contract of photography. Since the political space is free from state regulation, citizenship encompasses the global population of all those involved with photography at the level of: spectrum, spectator and operator. Hence she contends that for subjects within such photographs, inclusion in this community ‘offers an alternative [...] to the institutional structures that have abandoned and injured them’, and therefore ‘the consent of most photographed subjects to have their picture taken […] presumes the existence of a civil space in which photographers, photographed subjects, and spectators share a recognition that what they are witnessing is insufferable’ (18). This position raises questions as to the legitimacy of a so-called separate political space external to established sovereign state powers. In fact for many theorists, the photographic enterprise remains securely within the modes of normative production. Debord (1983) in particular maintains that the production of the spectacle is entirely contained by the means of production and reinforces class divisions. He argues that ‘the spectacle is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue [...] the self-portrait of power in the epoch of its totalitarian management of the conditions of existence’ (8). Thus the images that saturate one’s consciousness may appear different on the surface, but are instead replicas of the system in which they inhabit. As consequence they tend to reflect the viewer back upon themselves rather than the subjects captured within the frame. This is an oversimplification of the fact that indeed photography can enlighten viewers and create a sense of urgency that may in fact help to formulate novel conceptions of the world around them. Conversely though, one cannot simply comply with the idea that photography transcends the frameworks and systems that create this injustice in the first place. Instead the contextual data surrounding the photographic event becomes essential to understanding its role, along with the possible beneficial and damaging outcomes it carries.
Part III
Photography is endowed with a sense of trust and an all-knowing truth that reappears throughout discussions about it, Sontag (1977) states that ‘photographs – and quotations – seem, because they are taken to be pieces of reality, more authentic than extended literary narratives’ (74). Didi-Huberman (2003) declares that photographs are indeed, borrowing Arendt’s term, ‘instances of truths’ (31). Benjamin (1972), fearing that photography would become an arena in which textual information would lose out, was concerned that without a context a photograph could be infinitely read and that interpretation would reign supreme over the verification of truth. In fact, this threat to the authenticity of photography, tearing it away from context would indeed reveal the limitlessness of photographs. The malleability of photographic readings becomes evident within the larger context of information. For example, the majority of photographs taken by photojournalists may never make the cut into news publications. The images that are left out not only create a more coherent narrative of the event, imposed or otherwise, but also illustrate the grander scheme of rich information that can help one draw out a larger understanding of the selective images published. The captions may differ when an image of a dead Taliban soldier is printed in a nationwide American newspaper, to the one that may accompany it in an art gallery or photo book. Hence the framing of photography is not limited to the selectivity of composition and subject matter. Photographs becomes further framed with the text that accompanies them, within the larger context which they are presented and also the ways in which they may be retouched or cropped for emphasis on particularities within the image itself.
Photographs by the photojournalist and social documentarian Sebastião Salgado are stunningly beautiful and are regularly presented as images for visual pleasure through publication in coffee books or as exhibitions in art galleries. Conversely his images are renowned for their journalistic qualities of capturing social inequality, poverty and suffering. This grey area in which he occupies has given him a notorious status amongst critics who argue that his photography aestheticises pain and suffering rather than responsibly capturing the injustice. The argument materialises into a battle between the aesthetic and political realm, with the claim that they are mutually exclusive and that pain and suffering cannot be equally aesthetically appealing without jeopardising the struggle and demeaning the misery of those pictured. Salgado’s photo book Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age examines the physical toil and backbreaking labour of those in locations all across the world. His images are archetypal and are intended to reinstate dignity to the individuals pictured who he argues have become demeaned and exploited through the economic and social structures which keep them in their poverty. One of his most striking images in the book comes from the gold mines in Serra Pelada, Brazil and depicts the thousands of miners who work along the treacherously steep valleys (see plate 1). The people are indiscernibly human and look more like ants lined along an anthill. The subject in the foreground is a man resting with his back to the camera. His shirt is soaked through with mud and sweat. The folds in the shirt almost appear bronze-like akin to his skin tone. Upon first glance this image recalls an early iconic photograph of a slave’s back with uprooted scars from repeated lashings (see plate 2). The resemblance is striking. And even though the miner’s back is not scarred by whippings, it does not become unrealistic to believe that he may have similar scarring. What is most arresting about this image is the way in which Salgado has captured the slave-like labour he participates in and the slave-like repercussions he receives, without the need for any sensational jargon so-to-speak to grab our attention. In this sense the image does elicit a visceral response, one however that is more likely to entice viewers to seek beyond the image itself to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the situation. This should be the goal of all photojournalistic photography, to draw the viewer’s attention to the situation, but even further beyond what is pictured to the wider circumstances and politics that engender it. This weight on the image thus becomes shared between the contextual information that accompanies it: texts, discussions, other images, etc. With this in place, images without a context risk becoming simply objects of pleasure, spectacle and voyeuristic pursuits.
Plate 1 Plate 2
Sebastião Salgado. Gold miners of Serra Pelada, Brazil. 1993. Unknown. Scars of an escaped slave, US. 1863.
In his controversial documentary, Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty, Renzo Martens travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with one question ‘who owns poverty?’ Throughout his time in the Congo he meets international photojournalists making a living off of the images they capture of the conflict: raped women, malnourished children and the causalities of civil conflict. These photojournalists earn $50 per image and the photographs return to their international destinations never to be seen again in the Congo. Renzo attempts to help the Congolese take control of their poverty and gain access to the market by training local photographers to take images similar to those of the photojournalists. The images by the locals were subsequently rejected because they were deemed to be made with the intention of making money rather than making news. This emphasis on the intention or the merit of the photographer distorts the meaning of the image. How can an image solely be making news over another? Again, where is this threshold between sensationalist imagery and newsworthy imagery being drawn? This is precisely where one can witness the reproduction of modes of oppression within documentation; because what is considered documentation and newsworthy is restricted within the framework of the dominant power. Hence the limit is arbitrary and based solely on what is acceptable within the status quo.
A second pervasive issue raised by the film is that of the spectrum or the subject of the photographic gaze. Whist in the Congo, Martens visits a refugee camp alongside humanitarian workers who are providing aid and shelter to those displaced due to the civil conflict. The victims he witnesses become actors of poverty and take on the role of the helpless victim directly in front of the photojournalists’ lens and the humanitarian workers’ gaze. Their poverty is indeed a resource for them, but it also a resource for the NGOs and journalists. This co-dependent relationship is apparent in the obscene branding of the NGOs. With logos appearing on every item of aid, the question is, whose interests are the NGOs really serving? And it is here where photography of the pain and suffering of others becomes a mode of propaganda for both those in need and for the NGOs. For those suffering, the role they play in front of the camera dictates whether or not their plight will be recognized and supported. At the same time, for aid organisations, the visibility of their logos overseas is what ensures that they will be recognized and supported.
‘How do you make the unseen seen?’ (Peress cited in Linfield 2010; 258). Photography as a medium inherently makes something visible. The camera itself is endowed with the authority to show. If it is photographed then therefore it must be of some importance or value. The documentary Bus 174 reflects upon the ability of the camera to evoke a sense of importance, a sense of visibility and the troubling effects it has when it comes to representing violence through photography and video. The film recounts a day in Rio de Janeiro when a young man named Sandro hijacked a bus. Bus robberies are not uncommon among young people living on the streets as a means to get by, however, on this occasion, the robbery became a hijacking and a full-fledged media event. Photographers and news reporters flocked to the scene before the police and within minutes the event became broadcast live across the country. The event began in the afternoon and was over by dusk and resulted in the death of one passenger and Sandro himself. The culprit was a young man who became an orphan after his mother’s brutal murder and subsequently was forced to live on the streets. For most of the street children living in Rio and across Brazil their ‘greatest battle is against invisibility’.
This invisibility happens in two different ways: the child is invisible because his presence is ignored, he’s looked down on, or because we stigmatize him and only see a caricature. [And] when we project our prejudices onto someone, we cancel out and destroy what makes that person unique. We only see what we project onto him, a caricature, our own prejudices (Bus 174, 2002).
Thus for Sandro the presence of the multitude of video cameras and a vast audiences across the country was his moment of visibility. During this brief moment of notoriety, the camera had given him what society had never given him his entire life. The presence of the cameras throughout the event gave more power to Sandro, whilst paralysing the police’s actions (Hamburger 2008). Additionally, the presence of the camera elicited a role for Sandro to play that was almost expected of him. During the first hours of the incident Sandro is reluctant to be filmed and conceals himself from view. Eventually, he begins to take on the role of the victim-turned-villain brandishing his weapon and making threats directly into the camera and his act becomes increasingly dramatised as the afternoon unfolds. Thus the camera as a means of making him visible had rendered him a caricature of himself in which he was stuck. For Sandro, the cameras were his last shred of hope. ‘At the centre of this media event, Sandro enacted a reversed version of Foucault’s panopticon - he had the eyes of the world upon him’ (Hamburger 2008; 9). As long as the cameras were rolling, Sandro would remain alive and visible to everyone who watched. Shortly after his surrendered, he was hauled into a police van and under the supervision of no cameras. He was strangled and murdered.
Photographs of other people’s pain and suffering inherently carry with them a moral responsibility. Looking at a photograph of someone enduring the physical and mental distresses of war, famine or poverty is almost akin to a plea to be recognised and acknowledged; a cry to be heard, to be seen and to be saved. All photographs of such ask the viewer to take note of the atrocious event taking place, to remember the victims and to punish the perpetrators. These images call for us as viewers to look beyond the image and to ‘stop looking at the photograph and instead start watching it’ (Azoulay 2008; 14). Thus we must examine the image as a moment in time and space and part of a wider context. We must reflect anthropologically on the use and circumstances of specific images, and the intentions within the larger photographic enterprise (Didi-Huberman 2003). Where one draws the limit between sensationalist, pornographic photographs and those that are informative and empowering is ultimately arbitrary and again is a reflection of the image-maker and consumers’ ideological and normative frameworks. The market for images of pain and suffering will not die down. Wherever there is conflict there will be a photographer to document it. The only concrete thing these images can attest to is that human beings do indeed carry out atrocious acts of violence on fellow humans, and the endless stream of images only proves that it ceases to end.
References
Azoulay, A., 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Barthes, R., 2000. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage Books.
Benjamin, W., 1972. A Short History of Photography. Screen, 13(1), pp.5-26.
Bus 174. 2002. [DVD] Directed by José Padilha and Felipe Lacerda. Brazil: Zazen Produções.
Butler, J., 2005. Photography, War, Outrage. Modern Language Association: Theories and Methodologies, 120(3), pp.822-27.
Debord, G., 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red.
Didi-Huberman, G., 2003. Images in Spite of all: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty. 2009. [DVD] Directed by Renzo Martens. Netherlands.
Hamburger, E. I., 2008. Performance, Television and Film: Bus 174 as a Perverse Case of Appropriation of the Means of Constructing Spectacular Audiovisual Form. Observatorio Journal, 2(7), pp.1-11.
Linfield, S., 2010. The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Martens, R., 2011. Episode Three: Enjoy Poverty Q & A session. [discussion] (29 March 2011).
Price, M., 1994. The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
Reinhardt, M., Edwards, H., Duganne, E. Eds., 2007. Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Salgado, S., 1993. Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age. London: Phaidon.
Sontag, S., 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin.
Sontag, S., 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York, NY: Picador.
The Sarah Silverman Program. 2007. [DVD] New York: Comedy Central.
acoustemology
Advances in technology are generally perceived to be great leaps forward in innovation and ways of understanding ourselves and our worlds. The telephone for example, helped bring people across the country together through real-time transmission of the voice and this heralded great advances in our society. Knowledge and information was thus not limited to one region and could soon be shared across the world. Radios and satellite technology similarly shrank our world by allowing us to transmit live broadcasts to a vast array of citizens. Additionally, the current proliferation of the internet to all corners of the globe has allowed us to access stores of information in a heartbeat. In this sense our technological advances have helped to shape our understanding of our world. However, there are issues to be drawn from these advances in technology, and particularly in the rise of sound transmission and reproduction. Looking specifically at sound reproductive technology, I will be assessing the implications this has on our ability to access knowledge and meaning from our world. To begin, I shall develop an understanding of our perceptive abilities; particularly engaging with an understanding that perception is not limited to any one sense faculty but rather an interplay of the senses and a process of living in the world. Next, I will move on to discuss sound and how we draw on meaning from our natural environment. Here I will be introducing the notion of an acoustemology, or knowledge of the world through sonic means. Lastly, the two aforementioned sections are employed to aid in illustrating how reproductive sound technology is problematic for developing a valid acoustemology.
Perception
As human beings we are active perceivers in this world. We come equipped with five senses, and are socialized through culture. For anthropologists studying humans in their cultural habitat, we are interested in not only the structure of their society, tribe or collective but of experiences as human beings living and working within that environment. Perception becomes an integral part of understanding culture because of the way it greatly shapes our lived experiences. Yet this is an integral two-way process. The culture and environment we live within impacts the way people perceive their worlds and this will subsequently influence how they further develop as a group. Classen (1993 cited in Ingold 2000), writing on sensory models, states that cultures develop particular senses over others through collective experiences: for example aural cultures in Papua New Guinea to visual cultures in the West. Thus a person’s sensual perception can be understood as a reflection of their culture’s knowledge structures, language, rituals and history.
Perception for most psychologists is a secondary function in the whole process. Initially a physical sensations occurs, this is when a stimulus makes contact with a sense organ (eye, ear, nose, mouth, skin); and the interpretation of this sensation is our perception. Thus, sound waves hitting the ears are sensations and the interpretation of these haphazard waves into a dog’s barking is our perception. Merleau-Ponty (1962; 1964) objects by arguing that if indeed perception is a composite of raw sensory data, then our visual field would be made up solely of isolated impressions and never grasped in terms of their interconnectedness. In this respect, if I was facing three trees side-by-side, each would be registered as an entirely new and unique sensation. I would be able to recognize the similarities of one tree to the next based on comparison of the first tree. However, if one the third tree had lost all of its leaves and was thus bare and dissimilar to the other two, according to this model, I would be unable to recognize it as a tree. Simply put, this model removes our consciousness from the perceptual process (Merleau-Ponty 1962). This way of understanding how we perceive the environment additionally adheres strictly within a doctrine of Cartesian dualism, or the separation of mind and body. That is, our body interacts with the environment and our minds interpret the events and impose structural meaning on them based on our cultural knowledge. Ingold insightfully adds that:
At the heart of this approach is a representationalist theory of knowledge, according to which people draw on the raw material of bodily sensation to build up an internal picture of what the world ‘out there’ is like, on the basis of the models or schemata receives through their education in a particular tradition. The theory rests on a fundamental distinction between physical and cultural dimensions of perception, the former having to do with the registration of sensations by the body and the brain, the latter with the construction of representations of the mind (Ingold 2000: 282-3).
Indeed, with a separation of the physical and cultural dimensions a rift is created in what would be the experience of the world. We do not inhabit a solely physical world devoid of cultural significance and meaning that relies on us to fill in the gaps. Instead, our world is less dualistic and more realistic. This places an emphasis back on the experience we have in the world. In light of this, there has been a significant drive for anthropologists to examine the lived experiences of people and their cultures through the exploration of the senses (Pink 2006). However, even this move to a more holistic approach of studying human experience through the senses is still too focused on representing these modalities and has returned us, again, to a ‘dichotomy between mind and nature’ (Ingold 2000: 286); and the aural and visual realms are commonly misrepresented as two senses with opposing characteristics battling it out. This drama has seen itself unfold throughout history and particularly recently. Historically, anthropology had maintained a thoroughly visual and text heavy format of representation and analysis. The visual was recognized as the civilized mode of acquiring objective and rational information; the aural, on the other hand was deemed to be a less-civilized structure of knowledge that was subjective and intuitive: ‘vision objectifies, sound personifies’ (Ingold 2000). With the critique of modernity (Erlmann 2004) and the recent paradigm shift in anthropology, a revolt ensued against the visual/textual, and a romantic longing for an aural/oral mode of discourse emerged. A reversal of sorts erupted with anthropologists laying claim to the astounding nature of aural/oral tribes with assertions as grand as: ‘the more a society emphasizes the eye, the less communal in will be; the more it emphasizes the ear, the less individualistic it will be’ (Howes 1991 cited in Ingold 2000). Such work has indeed introduced a multisensory dimension to the study of human cultures, however this penchant for a single sensory domain over another reiterates a duality of visual/individualistic and aural/communal whilst also implying a hierarchy of importance (Erlmann 2004; Ingold 2000; Pink 2006).
In the everyday lived world, senses are not mutually exclusive. We hear, see, taste, smell and touch things almost constantly throughout the day and most times these sensations fuse into one another. The nature of our perception is a result of the interconnectedness of our senses (Ingold 2000; Pink 2006). When I visit a garden, it is not a case of my eyes are seeing this and my nose smelling this. Rather it is a holistic experience of being in the garden, taking in the sights, sounds smells, textures and overall feeling. It is the physical being of my body in the place and the subsequent interplay between the two which my perception is made up of. Ingold (2000; 2007) adds that ‘perception is not an ‘inside-the-head’ operation… but takes place in the circuits that cross-cut the boundaries between brain, body and world’ (2000: 244). From this standpoint, my perception is fuller and more enriched and rather than extracting truth from nature I get ‘presence’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964). This ‘presence’ we receive from perception is the certain je ne sais quoi that is impossible to obtain were we to perceive in the traditional static sense and relies on ‘the fact that we are our body’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 206). The classic model of perception, describes sensations within a completely static environment. Our real world is quite the opposite, in fact we regularly perceive through movement either as we move in our environment, as things move around us or as a combination of both. Since movement and motion ‘draw upon the kinesthetic interplay of tactile, sonic and visual senses, emplacement always implicates the intertwined nature of sensual bodily presence and perceptual engagement’ (Feld 1995: 94). Hence, our movement in the world as we perceive is precisely that which places us within the environment.
Lastly, we perceive within the grander scheme of things: culture, life histories and memories. One’s perception, in essence, is a continuous event with no beginning or end. This creates a contextual element to our experience as well. Hence perception is a process and a way in which we engage with our world (Ingold 1996). Perception becomes less about an isolated stimulus-response relationship and more about a bodily relationship with the environment that is continual and processual. A model such as this also emphasizes the subjectivity of experience, however this:
Consciousness of being in the world - is formed within an experiential reality… with whom individuals assume both a degree of commonality in experience and a shared framework of understanding through which they become aware of their own and other’s experience’ (Kapferer 1986: 189).
Here we come to understand that there is a certain synergy between our perception, personal history and experience within a shared cultural environment to give us a unique experience in this world. It is thus important to understand how our perception comes to shape our experiences and with specific attention paid to how our sonic environments allow us to extract meaning and knowledge from our world.
Sound
In the West, our world is greatly defined by visuality. A casual conversation of the sonic environment is much less heard of than one of the visual environment. We may be able to eloquently describe for hours a beautiful view. A beautiful sound, on the other hand, will be more difficult and we might soon find ourselves at loss for words, and not in an astoundingly profound way. We do not commonly talk about sounds - unless they are extremely bothersome or annoying do we burst with passion. Visuality is also apparent in our everyday language, usages such as: ‘see you later’ or ‘I see what you mean’ illustrate our visual mode of expression. Employing a Kantian line of thought that claims ‘all knowledge begins in experience,’ (Feld 2003: 223) we can step away from a purely visual mode of understanding to a multisensory one. Paying particular attention to our aural faculty of perception we come to appreciate that our sonic environment is just as richly varied and inscribed with cultural and historic meaning as our visual environment. Our landscape becomes a soundscape: a sonic environment, characterized as all encompassing such as landscapes are (Schafer 1994). ‘Soundscapes’, adds Feld (2003: 226), ‘are perceived and interpreted by human actors who attend to them as a way of making their place in and through the world’. Sounds are not meaningless waves through the air; rather they become recognized as significant parts of our cultural experience, development and understanding: an episteme; or as Feld puts it: an acousteme or acoustemology.
The sensorial qualities of sound are particularly unique. To begin with, sound physically penetrates the ears and cannot be blocked out by simply closing them. Thus when we perceive sounds, we are experiencing them on a bodily level as they travel inside of us. This innate ability of sound to travel gives it one of its most definable characteristics: movement. And this is particularly apparent in the way in which we describe sounds (e.g. humming, ringing or creaking) as actions in motion (Ingold 2000). The significance of the movement of sound is that it affirms our physical groundedness in the present environment and thus emplaces us in the world. In addition to this, sounds also embody a temporal quality. Entering and dissipating, their presences are unique moments in our lives and are able to transform the space around us through their effervescence. Thus:
By bringing a durative, motional world of time and space simultaneously to front and back, top and bottom and left and right, an alignment suffuses the entire fixed or moving body. This is why hearing and voicing link the felt sensations of sound and balance to those of physical and emotional presence (Feld 1996: 97).
In essence, the ability of sounds to capture and immerse us into the physicality of our worlds enables us to gain knowledge of our environment unique to that obtained through visual observation. Through developing a sense of knowing a place, sounds also help to shape our identities and fuse communities through a shared episteme (LaBelle 2010). It is through this all encompassing engulfing ability that aurality imposes a sense of communality, yet this should in no way be defined against visuality. An acoustemology does not overrule our visual faculties of accessing knowledge and meaning; instead it sheds light on the sonic facets of our lives and acknowledges their influence in shaping our worlds.
Within this framework, the temporal and spatial qualities of the sounds in our environment allow us to develop schemata, or our way of understanding and categorizing the world. Whilst documenting the various bird species and birdsongs in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea with the Kaluli people, a local informed Feld stating, ‘to you they are birds, to me they are voices in the forest’ (1982: 45). The Kaluli are a small tribe deep in the rainforest and are known for their aural culture. Birdsong, for the Kaluli, are said to be voices of deceased relatives. The rainforest inhabited by these birds is dense and thus the sounds appear to be coming from the forest rather than the birds themselves. Although the Kaluli are aware of this, it does not change their perception of where the sounds are produced. For the Kaluli this is also sentiment, in that the sounds the birds make are not regarded as just birdsongs but true connections between past and present and reflect Kaluli traditional beliefs and customs. Contrary to this, Feld’s own beliefs and customs lead him to perceive the importance of cementing the birdsong with the physical animal body and its species classification. Rather, as he observed, ‘knowledge is something more: a methos for putting a construction on the perceived, a means for scaffolding belief systems, a guide to actions and feelings’ (1986: 45).
The significance of the physical geography of the environment in shaping acoustic knowledge is equally important when it comes to our own vocalizations. As these become additives to the sonic environment it plays a considerable role in how these sounds resonate. Sound waves travel various distances before becoming absorbed by surfaces in their path. Thus sounds will resonate differently as a result of different surfaces they encounter: a mountain, a skyscraper or an open plane. Thus the unique reverberations we receive from our physical environment will subsequently shape what we vocalize back into it. ‘This reciprocity of reflection and absorption is a creative means of orientation – one that tunes bodies to places and times through their sounding potential’ (Feld 2003: 226). Therefore, our vocalizations will similarly carry our cultural identity as shaped by our environment. The diversity of accents across Great Britain are a great example of this reciprocal relationship within the environments they have developed. In How the Edwardians Spoke 2007, it was evidenced that British accents tend to mimic the geographic landscapes they are located; for example a Welsh accent is drawn out and full of rich intonation which visually resembles the long expanses of hilly grassland characteristic of the countryside. Conversely, accents in and around major industrialized cities in Britain are typically fast-paced, choppy and certainly more nasal in the northern chillier regions of the country.
If we are able to understand our worlds both culturally and meaningfully through sonic means produced in our environment and through our own resounded vocalizations, then it is logical to construe that the music and poetic utterances we create are also a part of this acoustic knowledge. Here we can come to understand the active role we, as social beings, play in developing this acoustemology through an expressive manner. For Bruner (1986: 7), forms of expression are thus, compartmentalized ‘units of experience’ in the world that have been coloured by our perceptual engagement in it. It is additionally important to pay note to the sociality of our being and the significance it plays in creating shared meaning. The sounds we hear as a collective unit reflect upon and shape one another - music performance is particularly evident of this capacity to bring agents together and impart social knowledge through the collective act of playing or listening. Music inherently ‘gives structure to time and creates its own sense of space and volume’ (Chanan 1994 cited in Filmer 2003:103) and Feld describes music as a ‘bodily mode of placing oneself in the world… and expressing it out as an intimately known and lived… a world of local knowledge that is articulated as vocal knowledge’ (Feld 2003: 237). In this sense, music intensifies the natural properties of sound and infuses them with ritual to engender a heightened form of social interaction that embodies and emplaces us in our world. However, with the proliferation of reproductive technologies, these collective aural experiences and domains of knowledge are threatened with the increasing privatisation of sound.
Technology
Our acoustic environments are resources for us to extract knowledge, meaning and understanding of our worlds. An acoustemology allows us to ground ourselves in the world around us and share our cultural experiences, histories and identities. Yet the recording, editing and reproduction of sounds and music hinder our ability to access knowledge through sonic means. Drawing on what has been discussed above; one perceives sound as an experience or a process of being in the world. Even the most advanced recording technology that can reproduce sounds to the minutest detail is unable to capture the experience of it. Since we listen with our entire bodies (Ihde 2003) the interplay of our senses during perceptual experience is what allows us to draw information from our environments. Reproductive technologies cut us off from our other senses and as one can observe ‘it is the very incorporation of vision into the process of auditory perception that transforms passive hearing into active listening’ (Ingold 2000: 277). Thus reproductive technology only lets us listen solely with the ears and this removes an entire dimension of perceptual experience.
The key elements of an acoustemology are the sonic sensations we receive through interaction with our environments. The emphasis here is on the environment’s role in developing our aural knowledge. Sound recording technology removes sound from its original place in time and space; and with the portability of playback devices, any place can become a simulation of the original place in time (Schafer 1994). If the temporal and spatial elements of a sound are what emplace us in our environment, then a sound recording should then, in theory, be able to emplace us within the original environment too, meaningfully and experientially. However, without the interplay of the senses we are unable to experience the sounds in the same way and our acoustic understanding diminishes. Schafer (1994), disheartened by the proliferation of sound recording, coined the term ‘schizophonia’ referring to sounds which are extracted from their natural environments and then reproduced elsewhere; he was obstinate in characterizing this as a nervous phenomenon with detrimental circumstances. Feld, describing the deleterious effects of schizophonia, states that, ‘once sounds like these are split from their sources, that splitting is dynamically connected to escalating cycles of distorted mutuality, and that mutuality to polarizing interpretations of meaning and value’ (1995: 121-2).
To illustrate this point, we can take a closer look at Feld’s work himself recording Voices of the Rainforest (1991) an album that aurally illustrates a typical day in the life of the Kaluli. The entire CD runs just short of an hour and opens with a morning rainforest soundscape, followed by a range of various activities (e.g. making sago, clearing brush and drumming) and closes with a nightfall forest soundscape. The sounds do indeed ‘take you away’ to the rainforest, of our imagination or one of memory, however the meaning one extracts is far more ambiguous and cannot alone give us a knowing of the people or place without contextual information. Additionally, the use of technology in and of itself poses an epistemological problem. Feld (1995) admits to having mixed an assortment of recordings from a range of microphones placed within various locations in the forest to capture the ‘full spatial dimensionality… and depth of the ambient rainforest environment’ (1995: 116). This throws a wrench into the recording works, even through employing state-of-the-art recording equipment and technology to not only capture but also meticulously mix together tracks with the help of the Kaluli people to recreate the nuanced sounds of the rainforest; it lacks ‘aura’. For Benjamin (1999: 216), aura is what he defines as ‘the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be’. Benjamin’s ‘aura’ is strikingly akin to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘presence’. Both refer to a corporeal intimacy that is degraded during the reproductive contract. A clear example of the degrading nature of reproductive technology is Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room (1969). In this recording Lucier recites a statement that is continually replayed in an empty room that gradually increases its feedback and becomes completely inaudible and unintelligible. This work is significant because of how it illustrates technology’s unwarranted tendency to distort and interpret the sound it records. His piece is a definite exaggeration of this, but nonetheless it sheds light on the fact that (visual and aural) recording technology is simply a man-made device designed to ‘imitate the human sensory apparatus by performing specific ranges of limited functions from which perceivers recreate fuller perceptual cues’ (Feld 1995: 116).
The privatization of sound is another effect of reproductive technologies. We are able to listen to recordings in the privacy and comfort of our homes, or on the go through headphones wherever we are. The sounds we are thus hearing take on another role for us, and rather than passing on a sort of knowledge, we are able to impose our knowledge and ideas onto them. Bull (2004), in his study on Walkman users, found that the music they listened to disengaged them from their environment and instead allowed them to create a sort of fantasy world. This is not limited to music, (as illustrated above) ethnographic records also cannot impart beneficial knowledge or understanding of cultures without broader information to contextualize the sounds, such as text, still or moving images. On top of this, the intimacy of the privatization of sound creates an illusionary sentiment of understanding and familiarity. Thus sound recordings remove the sound from its place of origin and therefore the understanding and knowledge of the place is disconnected. Hence, it becomes solely a sound in a vacuum with nothing rooting it to its original creator. Subsequently the ‘inconsequentiality of aesthetic control is what makes its pleasures unclouded... I make them [people] into whatever I wish. I am in charge; I invest their encounter with meaning’ (Bauman 1993 cited in Bull 2003: 183).
Sounds, in effect are true facets of the environments they are produced in. Removing them from their worlds, they lose meaning and are thus almost blank slates for us to impose our own conceptualizations onto. Sonic perception is also a bodily experience that cannot be reproduced through technological means. We hear through all of our senses and to constrain sound down to the ears discards the vital elements that make our sonic environments so enriching. Thus the meanings we gain from our aural worlds are truncated when listened to as a recording. Technology not only diminishes our acoustic knowledge of our world, but also destroys its ‘‘aura’’ or ‘‘presence’’. Subsequently, an acoustemology that does not take the use of reproductive technology into account threatens the validity of acoustic knowledge.
References
Back, L. and Bull, M., 2003. Introduction: Into Sound. In: M. Bull and L. Back, ed. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.
Benjamin, W., 1999. The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: H. Arendt, ed. 1999. Illuminations. Translated from German by H. Zorn. London: Pimlico, pp. 211-244.
Bruner, E.M. & Turner V.W. ed., 1986. The Anthropology of Experience. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Bull, M., 2004. Thinking about Sound, Proximity, and Distance in Western Experience: The case of Odysseus’s Walkman. In V. Erlmann, ed. 2004. Hearing Cultures: essays on sound, Listening and Modernity. New York: Berg. Ch. 9.
Erlmann, V., 2004. But What of the Ethnographic Ear? Anthropology, Sound, and the Senses. In V. Erlmann, ed. 2004. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound , Listening and Modernity. New York: Wenner-Gren. Ch. 1.
Feld, S., 1982. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Feld, S., 1991. Voices of the Rainforest: A Day in the Life of Kaluli People [CD] US: Rykodisc.
Feld, S., 1995. From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: The Discourses and Practices of World Music and World Beat. In: G.E. Marcus and F.R. Myers, ed. 1995. The Traffic in Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ch. 3.
Feld, S., 1996. Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. In: S. Feld and K.H. Basso, ed. 1996. Senses of Place. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Ch. 3.
Feld. S., 2003., A Rainforest Acoustemology. In: M. Bull and L. Back, ed. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Ch. 12.
Filmer, P. 2003., Songtime: Sound Culture, Rhythm and Sociality. In: M. Bull and L. Back, ed. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Ch. 6.
How the Edwardians Spoke. 2007 [DVD] London: BBC. (Written and presented by J. Washington).
Ihde, D., 2003. Auditory Imagination. In M. Bull and L. Back, ed. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Ch. 3.
Ingold, T. ed., 1996. Key Debates in Anthropology. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T., 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T., 2007. Against Soundscape. In: A. Carlyle, ed. 2007. Autumn Leaves. Paris: Double Entendre, pp.10-13.
Kapferner, B., 1986. Performance and the Structuring of Meaning and Experience. In: Bruner, E.M. & Turner V.W. ed., 1986. The Anthropology of Experience. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
LaBelle, B., 2010. Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. New York : Continuum.
Lucier, A., 1969. I am Sitting in a Room [MP3] US: Electronic Music Studios.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated from French by C. Smith. London: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1964. The Primacy of Perception. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Pink, S., 2006. The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging the Senses. Oxon: Routledge.
Schafer, R.M., 1994. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Perception
As human beings we are active perceivers in this world. We come equipped with five senses, and are socialized through culture. For anthropologists studying humans in their cultural habitat, we are interested in not only the structure of their society, tribe or collective but of experiences as human beings living and working within that environment. Perception becomes an integral part of understanding culture because of the way it greatly shapes our lived experiences. Yet this is an integral two-way process. The culture and environment we live within impacts the way people perceive their worlds and this will subsequently influence how they further develop as a group. Classen (1993 cited in Ingold 2000), writing on sensory models, states that cultures develop particular senses over others through collective experiences: for example aural cultures in Papua New Guinea to visual cultures in the West. Thus a person’s sensual perception can be understood as a reflection of their culture’s knowledge structures, language, rituals and history.
Perception for most psychologists is a secondary function in the whole process. Initially a physical sensations occurs, this is when a stimulus makes contact with a sense organ (eye, ear, nose, mouth, skin); and the interpretation of this sensation is our perception. Thus, sound waves hitting the ears are sensations and the interpretation of these haphazard waves into a dog’s barking is our perception. Merleau-Ponty (1962; 1964) objects by arguing that if indeed perception is a composite of raw sensory data, then our visual field would be made up solely of isolated impressions and never grasped in terms of their interconnectedness. In this respect, if I was facing three trees side-by-side, each would be registered as an entirely new and unique sensation. I would be able to recognize the similarities of one tree to the next based on comparison of the first tree. However, if one the third tree had lost all of its leaves and was thus bare and dissimilar to the other two, according to this model, I would be unable to recognize it as a tree. Simply put, this model removes our consciousness from the perceptual process (Merleau-Ponty 1962). This way of understanding how we perceive the environment additionally adheres strictly within a doctrine of Cartesian dualism, or the separation of mind and body. That is, our body interacts with the environment and our minds interpret the events and impose structural meaning on them based on our cultural knowledge. Ingold insightfully adds that:
At the heart of this approach is a representationalist theory of knowledge, according to which people draw on the raw material of bodily sensation to build up an internal picture of what the world ‘out there’ is like, on the basis of the models or schemata receives through their education in a particular tradition. The theory rests on a fundamental distinction between physical and cultural dimensions of perception, the former having to do with the registration of sensations by the body and the brain, the latter with the construction of representations of the mind (Ingold 2000: 282-3).
Indeed, with a separation of the physical and cultural dimensions a rift is created in what would be the experience of the world. We do not inhabit a solely physical world devoid of cultural significance and meaning that relies on us to fill in the gaps. Instead, our world is less dualistic and more realistic. This places an emphasis back on the experience we have in the world. In light of this, there has been a significant drive for anthropologists to examine the lived experiences of people and their cultures through the exploration of the senses (Pink 2006). However, even this move to a more holistic approach of studying human experience through the senses is still too focused on representing these modalities and has returned us, again, to a ‘dichotomy between mind and nature’ (Ingold 2000: 286); and the aural and visual realms are commonly misrepresented as two senses with opposing characteristics battling it out. This drama has seen itself unfold throughout history and particularly recently. Historically, anthropology had maintained a thoroughly visual and text heavy format of representation and analysis. The visual was recognized as the civilized mode of acquiring objective and rational information; the aural, on the other hand was deemed to be a less-civilized structure of knowledge that was subjective and intuitive: ‘vision objectifies, sound personifies’ (Ingold 2000). With the critique of modernity (Erlmann 2004) and the recent paradigm shift in anthropology, a revolt ensued against the visual/textual, and a romantic longing for an aural/oral mode of discourse emerged. A reversal of sorts erupted with anthropologists laying claim to the astounding nature of aural/oral tribes with assertions as grand as: ‘the more a society emphasizes the eye, the less communal in will be; the more it emphasizes the ear, the less individualistic it will be’ (Howes 1991 cited in Ingold 2000). Such work has indeed introduced a multisensory dimension to the study of human cultures, however this penchant for a single sensory domain over another reiterates a duality of visual/individualistic and aural/communal whilst also implying a hierarchy of importance (Erlmann 2004; Ingold 2000; Pink 2006).
In the everyday lived world, senses are not mutually exclusive. We hear, see, taste, smell and touch things almost constantly throughout the day and most times these sensations fuse into one another. The nature of our perception is a result of the interconnectedness of our senses (Ingold 2000; Pink 2006). When I visit a garden, it is not a case of my eyes are seeing this and my nose smelling this. Rather it is a holistic experience of being in the garden, taking in the sights, sounds smells, textures and overall feeling. It is the physical being of my body in the place and the subsequent interplay between the two which my perception is made up of. Ingold (2000; 2007) adds that ‘perception is not an ‘inside-the-head’ operation… but takes place in the circuits that cross-cut the boundaries between brain, body and world’ (2000: 244). From this standpoint, my perception is fuller and more enriched and rather than extracting truth from nature I get ‘presence’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964). This ‘presence’ we receive from perception is the certain je ne sais quoi that is impossible to obtain were we to perceive in the traditional static sense and relies on ‘the fact that we are our body’ (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 206). The classic model of perception, describes sensations within a completely static environment. Our real world is quite the opposite, in fact we regularly perceive through movement either as we move in our environment, as things move around us or as a combination of both. Since movement and motion ‘draw upon the kinesthetic interplay of tactile, sonic and visual senses, emplacement always implicates the intertwined nature of sensual bodily presence and perceptual engagement’ (Feld 1995: 94). Hence, our movement in the world as we perceive is precisely that which places us within the environment.
Lastly, we perceive within the grander scheme of things: culture, life histories and memories. One’s perception, in essence, is a continuous event with no beginning or end. This creates a contextual element to our experience as well. Hence perception is a process and a way in which we engage with our world (Ingold 1996). Perception becomes less about an isolated stimulus-response relationship and more about a bodily relationship with the environment that is continual and processual. A model such as this also emphasizes the subjectivity of experience, however this:
Consciousness of being in the world - is formed within an experiential reality… with whom individuals assume both a degree of commonality in experience and a shared framework of understanding through which they become aware of their own and other’s experience’ (Kapferer 1986: 189).
Here we come to understand that there is a certain synergy between our perception, personal history and experience within a shared cultural environment to give us a unique experience in this world. It is thus important to understand how our perception comes to shape our experiences and with specific attention paid to how our sonic environments allow us to extract meaning and knowledge from our world.
Sound
In the West, our world is greatly defined by visuality. A casual conversation of the sonic environment is much less heard of than one of the visual environment. We may be able to eloquently describe for hours a beautiful view. A beautiful sound, on the other hand, will be more difficult and we might soon find ourselves at loss for words, and not in an astoundingly profound way. We do not commonly talk about sounds - unless they are extremely bothersome or annoying do we burst with passion. Visuality is also apparent in our everyday language, usages such as: ‘see you later’ or ‘I see what you mean’ illustrate our visual mode of expression. Employing a Kantian line of thought that claims ‘all knowledge begins in experience,’ (Feld 2003: 223) we can step away from a purely visual mode of understanding to a multisensory one. Paying particular attention to our aural faculty of perception we come to appreciate that our sonic environment is just as richly varied and inscribed with cultural and historic meaning as our visual environment. Our landscape becomes a soundscape: a sonic environment, characterized as all encompassing such as landscapes are (Schafer 1994). ‘Soundscapes’, adds Feld (2003: 226), ‘are perceived and interpreted by human actors who attend to them as a way of making their place in and through the world’. Sounds are not meaningless waves through the air; rather they become recognized as significant parts of our cultural experience, development and understanding: an episteme; or as Feld puts it: an acousteme or acoustemology.
The sensorial qualities of sound are particularly unique. To begin with, sound physically penetrates the ears and cannot be blocked out by simply closing them. Thus when we perceive sounds, we are experiencing them on a bodily level as they travel inside of us. This innate ability of sound to travel gives it one of its most definable characteristics: movement. And this is particularly apparent in the way in which we describe sounds (e.g. humming, ringing or creaking) as actions in motion (Ingold 2000). The significance of the movement of sound is that it affirms our physical groundedness in the present environment and thus emplaces us in the world. In addition to this, sounds also embody a temporal quality. Entering and dissipating, their presences are unique moments in our lives and are able to transform the space around us through their effervescence. Thus:
By bringing a durative, motional world of time and space simultaneously to front and back, top and bottom and left and right, an alignment suffuses the entire fixed or moving body. This is why hearing and voicing link the felt sensations of sound and balance to those of physical and emotional presence (Feld 1996: 97).
In essence, the ability of sounds to capture and immerse us into the physicality of our worlds enables us to gain knowledge of our environment unique to that obtained through visual observation. Through developing a sense of knowing a place, sounds also help to shape our identities and fuse communities through a shared episteme (LaBelle 2010). It is through this all encompassing engulfing ability that aurality imposes a sense of communality, yet this should in no way be defined against visuality. An acoustemology does not overrule our visual faculties of accessing knowledge and meaning; instead it sheds light on the sonic facets of our lives and acknowledges their influence in shaping our worlds.
Within this framework, the temporal and spatial qualities of the sounds in our environment allow us to develop schemata, or our way of understanding and categorizing the world. Whilst documenting the various bird species and birdsongs in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea with the Kaluli people, a local informed Feld stating, ‘to you they are birds, to me they are voices in the forest’ (1982: 45). The Kaluli are a small tribe deep in the rainforest and are known for their aural culture. Birdsong, for the Kaluli, are said to be voices of deceased relatives. The rainforest inhabited by these birds is dense and thus the sounds appear to be coming from the forest rather than the birds themselves. Although the Kaluli are aware of this, it does not change their perception of where the sounds are produced. For the Kaluli this is also sentiment, in that the sounds the birds make are not regarded as just birdsongs but true connections between past and present and reflect Kaluli traditional beliefs and customs. Contrary to this, Feld’s own beliefs and customs lead him to perceive the importance of cementing the birdsong with the physical animal body and its species classification. Rather, as he observed, ‘knowledge is something more: a methos for putting a construction on the perceived, a means for scaffolding belief systems, a guide to actions and feelings’ (1986: 45).
The significance of the physical geography of the environment in shaping acoustic knowledge is equally important when it comes to our own vocalizations. As these become additives to the sonic environment it plays a considerable role in how these sounds resonate. Sound waves travel various distances before becoming absorbed by surfaces in their path. Thus sounds will resonate differently as a result of different surfaces they encounter: a mountain, a skyscraper or an open plane. Thus the unique reverberations we receive from our physical environment will subsequently shape what we vocalize back into it. ‘This reciprocity of reflection and absorption is a creative means of orientation – one that tunes bodies to places and times through their sounding potential’ (Feld 2003: 226). Therefore, our vocalizations will similarly carry our cultural identity as shaped by our environment. The diversity of accents across Great Britain are a great example of this reciprocal relationship within the environments they have developed. In How the Edwardians Spoke 2007, it was evidenced that British accents tend to mimic the geographic landscapes they are located; for example a Welsh accent is drawn out and full of rich intonation which visually resembles the long expanses of hilly grassland characteristic of the countryside. Conversely, accents in and around major industrialized cities in Britain are typically fast-paced, choppy and certainly more nasal in the northern chillier regions of the country.
If we are able to understand our worlds both culturally and meaningfully through sonic means produced in our environment and through our own resounded vocalizations, then it is logical to construe that the music and poetic utterances we create are also a part of this acoustic knowledge. Here we can come to understand the active role we, as social beings, play in developing this acoustemology through an expressive manner. For Bruner (1986: 7), forms of expression are thus, compartmentalized ‘units of experience’ in the world that have been coloured by our perceptual engagement in it. It is additionally important to pay note to the sociality of our being and the significance it plays in creating shared meaning. The sounds we hear as a collective unit reflect upon and shape one another - music performance is particularly evident of this capacity to bring agents together and impart social knowledge through the collective act of playing or listening. Music inherently ‘gives structure to time and creates its own sense of space and volume’ (Chanan 1994 cited in Filmer 2003:103) and Feld describes music as a ‘bodily mode of placing oneself in the world… and expressing it out as an intimately known and lived… a world of local knowledge that is articulated as vocal knowledge’ (Feld 2003: 237). In this sense, music intensifies the natural properties of sound and infuses them with ritual to engender a heightened form of social interaction that embodies and emplaces us in our world. However, with the proliferation of reproductive technologies, these collective aural experiences and domains of knowledge are threatened with the increasing privatisation of sound.
Technology
Our acoustic environments are resources for us to extract knowledge, meaning and understanding of our worlds. An acoustemology allows us to ground ourselves in the world around us and share our cultural experiences, histories and identities. Yet the recording, editing and reproduction of sounds and music hinder our ability to access knowledge through sonic means. Drawing on what has been discussed above; one perceives sound as an experience or a process of being in the world. Even the most advanced recording technology that can reproduce sounds to the minutest detail is unable to capture the experience of it. Since we listen with our entire bodies (Ihde 2003) the interplay of our senses during perceptual experience is what allows us to draw information from our environments. Reproductive technologies cut us off from our other senses and as one can observe ‘it is the very incorporation of vision into the process of auditory perception that transforms passive hearing into active listening’ (Ingold 2000: 277). Thus reproductive technology only lets us listen solely with the ears and this removes an entire dimension of perceptual experience.
The key elements of an acoustemology are the sonic sensations we receive through interaction with our environments. The emphasis here is on the environment’s role in developing our aural knowledge. Sound recording technology removes sound from its original place in time and space; and with the portability of playback devices, any place can become a simulation of the original place in time (Schafer 1994). If the temporal and spatial elements of a sound are what emplace us in our environment, then a sound recording should then, in theory, be able to emplace us within the original environment too, meaningfully and experientially. However, without the interplay of the senses we are unable to experience the sounds in the same way and our acoustic understanding diminishes. Schafer (1994), disheartened by the proliferation of sound recording, coined the term ‘schizophonia’ referring to sounds which are extracted from their natural environments and then reproduced elsewhere; he was obstinate in characterizing this as a nervous phenomenon with detrimental circumstances. Feld, describing the deleterious effects of schizophonia, states that, ‘once sounds like these are split from their sources, that splitting is dynamically connected to escalating cycles of distorted mutuality, and that mutuality to polarizing interpretations of meaning and value’ (1995: 121-2).
To illustrate this point, we can take a closer look at Feld’s work himself recording Voices of the Rainforest (1991) an album that aurally illustrates a typical day in the life of the Kaluli. The entire CD runs just short of an hour and opens with a morning rainforest soundscape, followed by a range of various activities (e.g. making sago, clearing brush and drumming) and closes with a nightfall forest soundscape. The sounds do indeed ‘take you away’ to the rainforest, of our imagination or one of memory, however the meaning one extracts is far more ambiguous and cannot alone give us a knowing of the people or place without contextual information. Additionally, the use of technology in and of itself poses an epistemological problem. Feld (1995) admits to having mixed an assortment of recordings from a range of microphones placed within various locations in the forest to capture the ‘full spatial dimensionality… and depth of the ambient rainforest environment’ (1995: 116). This throws a wrench into the recording works, even through employing state-of-the-art recording equipment and technology to not only capture but also meticulously mix together tracks with the help of the Kaluli people to recreate the nuanced sounds of the rainforest; it lacks ‘aura’. For Benjamin (1999: 216), aura is what he defines as ‘the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be’. Benjamin’s ‘aura’ is strikingly akin to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘presence’. Both refer to a corporeal intimacy that is degraded during the reproductive contract. A clear example of the degrading nature of reproductive technology is Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room (1969). In this recording Lucier recites a statement that is continually replayed in an empty room that gradually increases its feedback and becomes completely inaudible and unintelligible. This work is significant because of how it illustrates technology’s unwarranted tendency to distort and interpret the sound it records. His piece is a definite exaggeration of this, but nonetheless it sheds light on the fact that (visual and aural) recording technology is simply a man-made device designed to ‘imitate the human sensory apparatus by performing specific ranges of limited functions from which perceivers recreate fuller perceptual cues’ (Feld 1995: 116).
The privatization of sound is another effect of reproductive technologies. We are able to listen to recordings in the privacy and comfort of our homes, or on the go through headphones wherever we are. The sounds we are thus hearing take on another role for us, and rather than passing on a sort of knowledge, we are able to impose our knowledge and ideas onto them. Bull (2004), in his study on Walkman users, found that the music they listened to disengaged them from their environment and instead allowed them to create a sort of fantasy world. This is not limited to music, (as illustrated above) ethnographic records also cannot impart beneficial knowledge or understanding of cultures without broader information to contextualize the sounds, such as text, still or moving images. On top of this, the intimacy of the privatization of sound creates an illusionary sentiment of understanding and familiarity. Thus sound recordings remove the sound from its place of origin and therefore the understanding and knowledge of the place is disconnected. Hence, it becomes solely a sound in a vacuum with nothing rooting it to its original creator. Subsequently the ‘inconsequentiality of aesthetic control is what makes its pleasures unclouded... I make them [people] into whatever I wish. I am in charge; I invest their encounter with meaning’ (Bauman 1993 cited in Bull 2003: 183).
Sounds, in effect are true facets of the environments they are produced in. Removing them from their worlds, they lose meaning and are thus almost blank slates for us to impose our own conceptualizations onto. Sonic perception is also a bodily experience that cannot be reproduced through technological means. We hear through all of our senses and to constrain sound down to the ears discards the vital elements that make our sonic environments so enriching. Thus the meanings we gain from our aural worlds are truncated when listened to as a recording. Technology not only diminishes our acoustic knowledge of our world, but also destroys its ‘‘aura’’ or ‘‘presence’’. Subsequently, an acoustemology that does not take the use of reproductive technology into account threatens the validity of acoustic knowledge.
References
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Benjamin, W., 1999. The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. In: H. Arendt, ed. 1999. Illuminations. Translated from German by H. Zorn. London: Pimlico, pp. 211-244.
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