Images and human rights: towards sovereignty or subversion
Images and human rights: towards sovereignty or subversion
Date
2018
Authors
Phoenix, Michael
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Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the impact of images upon the human rights movement. It will
examine the potential of images to advance and repress human rights by drawing out trends in the
ways images are formed and used in human rights contexts. It will consider the extent to which
access to the protective web that human rights might provide is mediated visually; the extent to
which visual representations determine who can and cannot be seen through the lens of human
rights. It will find that two forces are engaged in a struggle for control over this lens, and that this
can be seen in specific ways in which human rights images are being created, used and interacted
with. It will be argued that the effects of this play out on the plane of intersubjectivity, the space in
which human rights violations emerge and in which they might be remedied and prevented.
Key words: images, sovereignty, subversion, control, collaboration, political imagination
Description
Second semester University: Université Libre de Bruxelles. Awarded thesis 2017/2018
Keywords
photography,
human rights,
freedom of expression,
sovereignty,
communication,
violence