Snap of the Whip/Crossroads of Shame: Flogging, Photography, and the Representation of Atrocity in the Congo Reform Campaign

Abstract

This article examines the recurrent iconography of the black body under the whip, and its ambivalent reception among British evangelical Christians during the colonial era. Flogging images have often been mixed signs, generating variously sympathetic, antipathetic, and even voyeuristic responses toward those pictured as being in pain. They are linked to a wider world of images of pain used variously, both publicly and privately, as an accusation and as a source of shameful pleasure. The specific case explored is the novel use of photography of flogging and other atrocities in the historic campaign to expose and end abuses in the Congo during the first decade of the 20th century. I describe how pictures of atrocities served as marks of painful contact between Africa and Europe, and salvation and shame. This is followed by a discussion of the ethics of reenactment and representation of the pain of others.

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