Theorizing the Event of Photography – The Visual Politics of Violence and Terror in Azoulay’s Civil Imagination, Linfield’s The Cruel Radiance, and Mitchell’s Cloning Terror

Despite the ongoing proliferation of images and imaging technologies, political theorists and scientists in the US remain oddly inattentive to visual matters. That indifference certainly limits political science; it may weaken the field of visual studies, too. Examining three significant books on photography, violence, and terror, I argue that the key task is to analyze the mutually constitutive relationship between the visual and political fields. Assessing the books in terms of how they can inform our understanding of that relationship, I explore some of the key puzzles and opportunities photography and other contemporary imaging practices offer students of politics.