Considering Looking: Political Spectatorship Distinct from Action

From museums commemorating genocide to human rights organizations issuing fundraising pleas, photographs of violence are a frequent means of calls to political action. Representations of suffering as a result of political violence invoke a theoretical trajectory that connects looking at images of suffering to actions undertaken in response to what is seen, culminating in a broader political change. This trajectory is also taken up in the models of spectatorship developed by contemporary visual theory, such as that of Ariella Azoulay. Attending to the assumptions and fantasies embedded in this broader trajectory, this paper reveals difficulties with Azoulay's argument for the political uses of photography and brings the possibility of such a politics into question. Alternatively, Jacques Rancière's theory of spectatorship provides a starting point for conceptualizing looking as an activity distinct from direct involvement in the looked upon scene. This paper will argue for a modest approach to looking, as a space for political and ethical imagination, rather than as the first step in enacting a response or mounting a campaign for change. If spectatorship is unmoored from the trajectory to which Azoulay and others confine it, then the political potential of photography requires reconsideration. I ask: If spectatorship does not necessarily lead to action, what is left of looking as a political practice? If given space distinct from action, how might practices of looking open up possibilities for appreciating the political dimensions of suffering?