Civil Imagination

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Louise Bethlehem

Description

The "Copernican Revolution" in studying photography brings to light how images can both reinforce and resist power regimes
Understanding photography is more than a matter of assessing photographs, writes Ariella Azoulay. The photograph is merely one event in a sequence that constitutes photography and which always involves an actual or potential spectator in the relationship between the photographer and the individual portrayed. The shift in focus from product to practice, outlined in Civil Imagination, brings to light the way images can both reinforce and resist the oppressive reality foisted upon the people depicted.
Through photography, Civil Imagination seeks out relations of partnership, solidarity, and sharing that come into being at the expense of sovereign powers that threaten to destroy them. Azoulay argues that the "civil" must be distinguished from the "political" as the interest that citizens have in themselves, in others, in their shared forms of coexistence, as well as in the world they create and transform. Azoulay's book sketches out a new horizon of civil living for citizens as well as subjects denied citizenship-inevitable partners in a reality they are invited to imagine anew and to reconstruct.
Beautifully produced with many illustrations, Civil Imagination is a provocative argument for photography as a civic practice capable of reclaiming civil power.

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des Arts
• Histoire des arts visuels
• Hannah Arendt
• Guerre de Palestine de 1948
• Roland Barthes
• ART
• Susan Sontag
• Rape
• Palestine
• Theory
• Criticism
• 1948 Palestinian exodus
• Nakba

Informations

• Publié par: Verso
• Date de parution: 13 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784783013
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CIVIL IMAGINATION
CIVIL IMAGINATION
A Political Ontology of Photography
ARIELLA AZOULAY
Translated by Louise Bethlehem
This paperback edition first published by Verso 2015
First published in the English language by Verso 2012
Translation © Louise Bethlehem 2012, 2015
First published as
[Civil Imagination: Political Ontology of Photography]
© Resling Publishing, Israel 2010
All rights reserved
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the images in this book. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future editions.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-303-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-302-0 (US)
eISBN-13: 978-1-78478-301-3 (UK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress Has Cataloged the Hardcover Edition as Follows:
Azoulay, Ariella.
[Dimyon ezrahi. English]
Civil imagination : a political ontology of photography / Ariella Azoulay; translated by Louise Bethlehem.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84467-753-5
1. Photographic criticism—Israel. 2. Photography—Political aspects—Israel. 3. Photography—Philosophy. I. Title.
TR187.A98313 2012
770.1—dc23
2012006239
Typeset in Sabon by Hewer UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the US by Maple Press
CONTENTS   List of Figures  
Introduction one What Is Photography? two Rethinking the Political three The Photograph as a Source of Civil Knowledge four Civil Uses of Photography   Epilogue: The Right Not to Be a Perpetrator  
Notes   Bibliography   Index
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover: Micha Kirshner, preparations for photographing Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, 1988
Introduction
Micha Kirshner, Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, 1988
Chapter 1
1.1 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, Lemon cameras, 1977
1.2 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, picture taken with Lemon camera (convex), 1977
1.3 Aïm Deüelle Lüski, picture taken with Lemon camera (concave), 1977
1.4 Jerusalem, by Anne Paq, 2007
1.5 Biddu checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2002
Chapter 2
2.1 Huda, Masud, by Micha Kirshner, 1988
2.2 “Collective Sleeping Arrangements in Gaza,” Gaza, 2009
2.3 Little Rock, 1957
2.4 Kufr Bir‘im
Chapter 3
3.1 Rafah, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.2 Rafah, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.3 Tulkarm Refugee Camp, by Nir Kafri, 2002
3.4 Sur Baher, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.5 Wadi Qaddum, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, March 2007
3.6 Sur Baher, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.7 Al-Tur, East Jerusalem, by Tess Scheflan, 2007
3.8 Al-Tur, East Jerusalem, by Oren Ziv, January 2007
3.9 Brazil Camp, Gaza Strip, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.10 Ein Beit al-Ma’ Refugee Camp, Nablus, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.11 Rafah, by anonymous military photographer, 2004
3.12 Al-Muqata‘a, Jenin, by Joseph Algazy, 2001
3.13 Al-Faradis village, Hebron region, by Yotam Ronen, 2008
3.14 Hebron, by Anne Paq, 2003
3.15 Anata, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor, 2006
3.16 Jenin refugee camp, 2002
3.17 Al-Walaja village, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.18 The road from al-Ram to Ramallah, by Yotam Ronen
3.19 Al-Issawiya, East Jerusalem, by Keren Manor
3.20 Hebron, 2007
3.21 Luban al-Sharqiya, north of Ramallah, by Dafna Kaplan, 2003
3.22 Hebron, by Keren Manor, 2007
3.23 Beit Hanoun, 2004–2005
3.24 Jayyous, by Miki Kratsman, 2002
3.25 Between Qalqilya and Tulkarm, 2003
3.26 Beit Ur al-Tahta, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.27 Beit Ur al-Tahta, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.28 The separation wall around Rachel’s Tomb, Bethlehem, by Anne Paq, 2006
3.29 Year unknown
3.30 Kharbata, by Miki Kratsman, 2005
3.31 Near Anata, East Jerusalem, by Yotam Ronen, 2007
3.32 Gilo, apartheid road, by Ian Sternthal, 2005
3.33 Route 443, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.34 Azzun Atma, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.35 Azzun Atma, by Miki Kratsman, 2006
3.36 Maccabim checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.37 Unidentified location, by Suha Zaid, 2004
3.38 Beit Liqya, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.39 Flying checkpoint, Trans-Samaria Highway, by Miki Kratsman, 2001
3.40 Al-Tufah checkpoint, by Nir Kafri, 2003
3.41 Huwwara checkpoint, 2003
3.42 Qalandiya checkpoint, by Yotam Ronen, 2007
3.43 Beit Furik checkpoint, 2004
3.44 Huwwara checkpoint, by Dorit Hershkowitz, 2006
3.45 Huwwara checkpoint, by Miki Kratsman, 2007
3.46 Watchtower at the entrance to Hebron, by Anne Paq, January 2006
3.47 The Erez crossing into Israel, by Nir Kafri, 2007
3.48 Suhmata, by Zoltan Kluger, June 1, 1949
Chapter 4
4.1 Afula, by Fred Chesnik, 1948
4.2 Al-Ramla, by Beno Rothenberg, 1948
4.3 Qalansuwa, by David Eldan, May 10, 1949
4.4 Qalansuwa, by David Eldan, May 10, 1949
4.5 Al-Quds/Jerusalem, by Ali Zaarour, 1948
4.6 Al-Ramla, by Beno Rothenberg, 1948
Epilogue
Refugee camp near Ramallah, by members of “Breaking the Silence,” 2002
 

Micha Kirshner, Aisha al-Kurd and her son Yassir, 1988
INTRODUCTION
The woman whose portrait appears on the opposite page, Aisha al-Kurd, is the overt and covert interlocutor of this book. I have never met her in person. Yet she has accompanied my thought ever since I first saw her photograph. Aisha and her husband (whose name I do not know), the parents of five children, were held in administrative detention for months by the Israeli authorities in 1988, and their house was demolished. When I first encountered her portrait during the late 1980s, I mistakenly viewed it as an instance of the “aestheticization of suffering”: the creative output of photographer Micha Kirshner. At the time, I thought that my analytical position concerning the aestheticization of suffering was a critical one. 1 It was only later that I became aware of the trap inherent in such a stand. This trap—which routinely opposes the aesthetic to the political—already preoccupied me at the time, but it was only gradually that its features, as well as the worldview that it organizes, became clear to me. The present volume will explore the fallacy that beset me then at length, while simultaneously attempting to rethink the category of the “political”—its boundaries and limitations—as well as to clear space for the emergence of a different category—that of the “civil.”
My encounters with Aisha al-Kurd over the years, meetings that exist only under the cover of the imagination, reflect changes in my thought concerning photography, concerning the sphere of the political, and concerning citizenship. On the basis of her photograph, and photographs of other individuals, this book seeks to imagine a civil discourse under conditions of regime-made disaster. Under such conditions, citizenship is restricted to a series of privileges that only a portion of the governed population enjoys and, even then, to an unequal degree. The central right pertaining to the privileged segment of the population consists in the right to view disaster—to be its spectator. What is at stake is not the enjoyment that potentially attaches to the act of spectatorship, but the act itself, which is reserved for the privileged bearers of citizens’ rights who are able to observe the disaster from comparative safety, whereas those whom they observe belong to a different category of the governed, that is to say, people who can have disaster inflicted upon them and who can then be viewed subsisting in their state of disaster.
The scandal that attaches to the portrait of Aisha al-Kurd does not reside in the photograph itself, whether in its aesthetic value (its beauty seems to transcend disputes of taste) or in any other of its discrete qualities. The scandal lies in the fact that Aisha al-Kurd’s house was, and remains, vulnerable to the violent invasion of Israeli citizens in uniform and also, that it remains permeable to those who observe her suffering—that is to say, privileged citizens who do not see her condition as one of disaster, precisely, or who view it at best as a “disaster contingent on one’s point of view.”
Aisha al-Kurd’s disaster, like that of millions of Palestinians governed by the state of Israel, is a regime-made disaster. A regime-made disaster is brought into being by the regime. In cases like the present one, it comes to define the regime itself and its ability to reproduce itself. The specific regime-made disaster in question is perpetuated without being acknowledged as such by those citizens who live under its reach. This civil malfunction, which does not allow for the disaster that afflicts other segments of the governed to be recognized as disaster, is one of the fundamental conditions for the appearance/disappearance of a regime-made disaster. Much of the violence that brings it into being lacks widespread attributes of violence as we commonly understand it: these acts are neither spontaneous nor are they random, chance outbreaks. On the contrary, they form part of an organized, regulated and motivated system of power that is nourished by the institutions of the democratic state, which in turn is sheltered under their umbrella. My fundamental point of departure in this book consists in the claim that, under the conditions of regime-made disaster, the first step in the evolution of a civil discourse lies in the act of refusing to identify disaster with the population upon whom it is afflicted. It consists in the refusal to see the disaster as a defining feature, precisely, of this population as expressed, for example, in the phrase “Palestinian refugee.” A civil discourse is thus one that suspends the point of view of governmental p