On viewing: the politics of looking at the corpse

Abstract

This paper assesses the politics of images of the dead body. Western cultural norms often dictate that dead bodies should not be viewable outside of the funerary industry, especially when they are graphic by virtue of a bloody and violent death. These cultural taboos tell us that dead bodies do not belong in the public sphere, and something extraordinary must be the case for them to be on display and rendered visible. However, rather than focus on the taboo itself that structures these regimes of visuality, this paper focuses on the political work these taboos do to enact particular performances of rehumanization and dehumanization of the dead. It traces the paradox of the ambivalent effects of dead bodies when they are rendered visible in global politics in two main ways: one, humanizing, to advocate for attention to a particular crisis-of-humanity, and two, to dehumanize particular dead bodies in the service of a narrative that depicts enemy bodies as killable.

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