EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE AND SPECTATORSHIP

ARCHIVO READING GROUP

EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE AND SPECTATORSHIP

Birgit Eusterschulte

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

In his essay “Epistemic Violence and the Careful Photograph” the art historian Tom Holert discusses the recent shift in the criticism of photography: Rather than critizicing photography as a medium and instrument of power and discipline authors like Ariëlla Azoulay and others revisit the activity and the materiality of the photographic act whereby Azoulay in particular demands the responsibility of the spectator and claims a “civil contract of photography” (2008). The presupposition of performativity, which Azoulay’s approach demands from the viewer, is challenged in Holert’s essay by referring to the feminist scholar Sarah Jane Cervenak and “the option of nonperformativity as a political and theoretical stance of strategy.” (Holert, 2019: 7). From the starting point of Holert’s essay and the given example of photographs of the Rana Plaza accident in 2013 The Reading Group Session will discuss his argumentation in relation to Ariëlla Azoulay’s text “The Ethic of the Spectator: The Citizenry of Photography” and the politics of nonperformativity in Cervanek’s text “The Problem of After”. Addressing the politics of representation and artistic approaches to confront epistemic violence the Group Reading Session contributes to the annual theme of the Archive as Source and Model.

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Birgit Eusterschulte, art historian, research associate (post-doc) in the Collaborative Research Center 1512 Intervening Arts, Freie Universität Berlin. After studying art history and German literature, she initially worked as a curator. Phd in art history in 2017, FU Berlin; postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin University of Arts 2017-2019; her current project Unlearing History asks how different models of artistic historiography intervene in dominant narratives as methodical unlearning.