Visual violence in global politics: a figuration approach

Visual representations are vital to our understanding of political violence. While a growing number of scholars are exploring the political side of the visual, the visual side of the political, and the global side of both in press photography, filmmaking, gaming, and artwork, International Relations (IR) scholarship only implicitly reflects how violence and its visual representations relate, intersect, and differ. However, a closer look at these differences advances our understanding of the political power and ethical responsibilities produced by visual violence. By treating context and meaning as starting points rather than conclusions, I ask what violent images do politically and ethically. This article focuses on ways of showing and seeing violence by introducing a figuration approach. The visual–violence nexus refers to the multiple ways of showing and seeing violence. I argue that a critical reflection on how visuals and violence relate differently is valuable for Visual (IR) scholars for two reasons. First, such a reflection helps navigate this complex terrain conceptually and empirically by highlighting not only patterns but also tensions and differences. Second, it creates a space and vocabulary for rethinking the politics and ethics of violence inherent to specific practices of representation and the responsibilities that arise when violent images are made, shared, and seen. The aim of this contribution is to provide tools for understanding what violent images do , politically and ethically, rather than simply cataloging their polysemic meaning(s). In this article, I discuss five different figurations of the visual–violence nexus: the documentary, the artistic, the iconoclastic, the causative, and the entangled figuration. These figurations are designed along three lines: (1) nodes relating to time and space, the relation between violence and body, and the power of performing and visually representing violence; (2) sides such as production, display, circulation, and audience; and (3) the technical, compositional, and social modalities of representational practices.