Sexual Violence In The Field Of Vision, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2017
Sexual Violence In The Field Of Vision, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
Meditating on a single photograph from a recent Human Rights Watch report concerning police violence in Northern British Columbia, Canada, this paper pursues two lines of questions about the visual politics of human rights. One concerns how our ways of seeing—our modes of attending to the vulnerability and integrity of particular persons—can itself be understood as a form of human rights practice. The other aims to widen space in contemporary political theory for thinking about how sexual violence functions as a central technology of sovereignty and how we might make this phenomenon more perceptible. The paper explores the ways photographs …
The Woman Who Walks Through Photographs, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2017
The Woman Who Walks Through Photographs, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This paper explores Michal Heiman's creative strategy to imaginatively enter the space of asylum. Her recent project, RETURN: ASYLUM (THE DRESS, 1855-2018), offers a new way to extend solidarity to people who have been subjugated by the institution. She actively enlists the public's help in developing further strategies for connecting with those individuals who have been bereft of legal rights to property, family, or public hearing. This article explores Heiman's crucial political intervention, which blends creative visual practice with object relations theory.
Sexuality In The Time Of War, Or, How Rape Became A Crime Against Humanity, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2016
Sexuality In The Time Of War, Or, How Rape Became A Crime Against Humanity, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
Working closely with women's testimonies from the genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, this chapter aims to widen space in contemporary human rights discourse for discussion about sexuality--and in particular about the ways sexual violence functions as one of the forces of sovereign power. There is an intimate and largely non-visible strategy that sovereign power has at its disposal to cleave a subject from their capacity to live a human life, namely, by attacking the individual’s sense of sovereignty over her own body.
Mandela's Dark Years: A Political Theory Of Dreaming, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2015
Mandela's Dark Years: A Political Theory Of Dreaming, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
Inspired by one of Nelson Mandela’s recurring nightmares, Mandela’s Dark Years offers a political reading of dream-life. Sharon Sliwinski guides the reader through the psychology of apartheid, recasting dreaming as a vital form of resistance to political violence. This short, provocative study blends political theory with clinical psychoanalysis, opening up a new space to consider the politics of reverie.
Evocative Objects: A Sexual Violence Primer, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2015
Evocative Objects: A Sexual Violence Primer, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This commentary on Nina Berman’s series, “Object Lessons,” examines the photographer’s strategy of photographing trial evidence from cases of sexual slavery and human trafficking as a study in object relations.
The Face Of Our Wartime, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2014
The Face Of Our Wartime, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This paper considers a turn toward portraiture amongst contemporary photojournalists who have covered the War on Terror. A series of wartime faces is examined in order to consider the way prolonged conflict flattens our visual landscape.
Inventing Human Dignity, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2014
Inventing Human Dignity, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
Are human beings endowed with an inviolable dignity? Or is dignity something that is lost and won? One of the most significant assertions made in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the statement that every individual possesses an inalienable dignity simply by virtue of belonging to the “human family.” This chapter aims to make a modest contribution to the emerging scholarship on the history and meaning of dignity as it pertains to universal human rights. My goal is to trace how this particular quality came to be affixed to the human …
The Storyteller: Observations On Murtada Bulbul’S ‘Swineherders’, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2012
The Storyteller: Observations On Murtada Bulbul’S ‘Swineherders’, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This review engages Murtada Bulbul's series of photographs of Bangladeshi swineherders (published in this issue), casting the photographer's treatment as that of a storyteller. On one hand, this treatment suggests the importance of visual-cultural forms for the very legibility of human rights. On the other hand, Bulbul's pictures can teach us something about what it means to live a "bare life," that is, to live at the edges of the human community.
Human Rights In Camera, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2010
Human Rights In Camera, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
From the fundamental rights proclaimed in the American and French declarations of independence to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Hannah Arendt’s furious critiques, the definition of what it means to be human has been hotly debated. But the history of human rights—and their abuses—is also a richly illustrated one. Following this picture trail, Human Rights In Camera takes an innovative approach by examining the visual images that have accompanied human rights struggles and the passionate responses people have had to them.
The Aesthetics Of Human Rights, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2008
The Aesthetics Of Human Rights, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This essay situates the 1755 Lisbon earthquake as an alternate origin point for human rights discourse. As one of the most destructive earthquakes in recorded history, the event had a broad effect on both scientific and philosophical thought. The quake also represents one of the first modern mass media events in which subjects throughout Europe became spectators to a distant catastrophe. Both visual and verbal representations of the event circulated throughout Europe with incredible efficiency and helped inaugurate a secular notion of human suffering as well as thoughts about its prevention. The story of the quake shows that the notion …
Camera War, Again, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2005
Camera War, Again, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
The war in Iraq has undoubtedly produced some of the most dreadful entries in the history of camera war.
The Childhood Of Human Rights: The Kodak On The Congo, Sharon Sliwinski
Dec 2005
The Childhood Of Human Rights: The Kodak On The Congo, Sharon Sliwinski
Sharon Sliwinski
This article examines the Congo reform movement's use of atrocity photographs in their human rights campaign (c. 1904–13) against Belgian King Leopold, colonial ruler of the Congo Free State. This material analysis shows that human rights are conceived by spectators who, with the aid of the photographic apparatus, are compelled to judge that crimes against humanity are occurring to others. The article also tracks how this judgement has been haunted by the potent wish to undo the suffering witnessed.
