Full Description
Recent political conflicts signal an increased proliferation of image testimonies shared widely via social media. Although witnessing with and through images is not a phenomenon of the internet era, contemporary digital image practices and politics have significantly intensified the affective economies of image testimonies. This volume traces the contours of these conditions and develops a conception of image testimony along four areas of focus.
The first and second section of this volume reflects the discussion of image testimonies as an interplay of evidential qualities and their potential to express affective relationalities and emotional involvement. The third section focuses on the question of how social media technologies shape and subsequently are shaped by image testimonies. To further complicate the ethical position of the witness, the final section looks at image testimony at the intersection of creation and destruction, taking into account the perspectives of different actors and their opposed moral positions.
With an emphasis on the affectivity of these images, Image Testimonies provides new and so far overlooked insights in the field. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Sociology and Social Policy, Media and Communications, Visual Arts and Culture and Middle East Studies.
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Image Testimonies: Witnessing in Times of Social Media - Kerstin Schankweiler, Verena Straub, Tobias Wendl
PART I: EPISTEMOLOGIES OF TESTIMONIES
Credibility in Crisis: Contradictions of Web Video Witnessing - Sascha Simons
Affective Images and the Political Trial - Jonas Bens
IN CONVERSATION: Fearless Filming—Video Footage from Syria since 2011 - Marianna Liosi with Guevara Namer and Amer Matar
PART II: AFFECTIVE WITNESSING
"Moroccan Lives Matter": Practices and Politics of Affecting - Kerstin Schankweiler
Drone's-Eye View: Affective Witnessing and Technicities of Perception - Michael Richardson
PART III: SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICES
Photographic Witnessing, the Occupation, and Palestinian Politics - Simon Faulkner
Witnessing to Survive: Selfie Videos, Live Mobile Witnessing and Black Necropolitics - Penelope Papailias
Eye, Flesh, World: Three Modes of Digital Witnessing - Paul Frosh
PART IV: WITNESSING DESTRUCTION
"Living Martyrs": Testifying What is to Come - Verena Straub
Testimonies for a New Social Order: The Islamic State's Iconic Iconoclasm - Christoph Günther, Tom Bioly
From Cape Town to Timbuktu: Iconoclastic Testimonies in the Age of Social Media - Tobias Wendl
