OPTICS OF DISPOSABILITY ! OPTICS OF DISPOSABILITY: DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE STRUGGLE TO APPEAR By CLORINDE PETERS, BA (Hons.), MPhil A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University, ! Copyright by Clorinde Peters, April 2018 McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2018) Hamilton, Ontario (English and Cultural Studies) TITLE: Optics of Disposability: Documentary Photography and the Struggle to Appear AUTHOR: Clorinde Peters, BA (Lehigh University), MPhil (University of Cambridge) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Henry A. Giroux NUMBER OF PAGES: ix, 271 A portion of Chapter One has been published as: “Visualizing disposability: photographing neoliberal conflict in the United States,” Afterimage, 44.6 (2017), 6-11. ! ii! LAY ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the ability of emergent modes of documentary photography to articulate and resist social and political violence that is characteristic of neoliberalism, for example the domestic militarization and increased incarceration rates, the shrinking of access to the public sphere, and the particular ways in which certain populations become especially vulnerable to such violence. Shifts in photographic production thanks to new media platforms and the reconfigurations of traditional photography genres have produced photographic strategies that are crucially poised to address such issues. The photographers and projects explored in this dissertation employ new ways of visualizing violence, speaking back to the ways that photography can be used to stultify discourse and misrepresent populations, and harnessing innovative modes of proliferating their work to produce new photographic and political communities. ! ! ! ! iii! ABSTRACT Amplifications in photographic production and the increased access to images in the 21st century uniquely position photography to articulate and intervene in social structures of power and provide new opportunities for civic engagement. In particular, photography has the potential to articulate and resist what can be understood as a politics of disposability, or the ways in which particular populations are rendered superfluous to the economic and social logic of neoliberalism and channeled out of society. I assert that neoliberal violence must be understood, in part, as a visual problem: the particularities of representation and visibility must be examined in light of the need to consider neoliberal social and economic policies as something other than an inevitability. This dissertation explores the ways that photography can serve to make visible not only the people and discourses that have been marginalized and suppressed, but the structures of disposability itself. Developments in artistic practices and departures from traditional documentary genres converge with precarious labor conditions for cultural workers to widen the parameters for photographic production. The resulting work engages both with the ontological questions of what documentary photography has become as well as with its ability to operate as a potential site of activism—rather than mere representation— through new modes of mediation. This dissertation examines new photographic work that addresses the multiple facets of a neoliberal politics of disposability, the effects of which are compounded by race, class, and gender: police violence and domestic militarization, the skyrocketing rate of women’s incarceration, and the institutional threats to youth and activism in the public sphere. These emergent photographic practices employ new strategies of visualization in order to complicate the viewer’s relationship to representations of violence, contributing to a discourse that broadens the possibility for a critical and productive use of photographs, and imagining alternatives to the material and ideological conditions of neoliberal disposability. ! iv! In memory of Edi, who forever changed how I see ! v! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship Program, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University for their support, without which I would not have been able to complete this project. I am grateful to the students, faculty, and staff who have all been a formative part of my development here, including Susie O’Brien, Daniel Coleman, Amber Dean, Mary O’Connor, James Ingram, Maya Sabados, Antoinette Somo, Ilona Forgo-Smith, and Aurelia Gatto. I am particularly grateful to my supervisory committee, Henry Giroux, David Clark, and Susan Searls Giroux, for their insightful critiques and support of my work. Henry has consistently pushed me to remain tethered to the material consequences of my research questions, while simultaneously encouraging me to take risks and make the work my own. David has been a tremendously thoughtful mentor, and a great resource to me in aspects reaching even beyond the dissertation. I have had the great privilege of working with him in several teaching assignments, and his pedagogy has undoubtedly shaped my own. Susan has encouraged me to develop laterally as an academic, inviting me to serve on a gender equity review committee, an important experience and a concern that remains central to my work. I would also like to thank Stephanie Springgay for serving as my external examiner and for her generative questions and suggestions. I have been fortunate to be surrounded by a remarkable group of people who have shaped and inspired my own thinking and have challenged me with theirs. Nisha Eswaran, Jordan Sheridan, Evan Johnston, and Angela Orasch are people whom I admire deeply, learn from continuously, and am lucky to consider my friends. Thank you to Emma McKenna, with whom I have shared many struggles and triumphs, who has taught me so much about theory, politics, and friendship, and who understands me in ways that few do. Thank you to Craig Jennex, one of my favorite people and someone I will never tire of watching teach, for his friendship and his patient and brilliant edits. Thank you to Doug Mason, one of my most thoughtful teachers in photography and to Maya Benton, who has been a crucial influence on the trajectory of my professional life. I am grateful to Daniel Wendlek for his love, challenging ideas, and enduring humor, and to Shelby Ek, who has become a sister and who I suspect will always be a home to me.! Thank you to my family, who is tirelessly proud and supportive of my work, despite the great geographical distance between us. My parents instilled in me their love of art and their conviction that it is not only worthwhile, but necessary. My sister Alexandra continues to inspire me with her strength and her stubborn belief that things can get better. Finally, thank you to Mike Boyd, who entered my life at the perfect moment, who supports me unconditionally but also reminds me that there is a whole world beyond this work, and who makes me happy every day. ! vi! TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Optics of Disposability ……………………………………………………..1 A politics of disposability ………………………………………………………...3 Disposability and the image ……………………………………………………..10 Chapter One: Photographing Neoliberal Conflict in the United States ………………....24 Grievability in the news ………………………………………………………....24 Crisis of representation ………………………………………………………….27 Spectacle and the normalization of violence …………………………………....32 Wartime subject: Peter van Agtmael …………………………………………....39 averted vision …………………………………………………………....41 text and image …………………………………………………………...47 Sites of violence: Josh Begley …………………………………………………..55 documents of death ……………………………………………………...58 Corrective photography: LaToya Ruby Frazier ………………………………....62 new social documentary photography …………………………………..66 possibilities for resistance and hope …………………………………….73 Riposte to ungrievability ………………………………………………………...79 Chapter Two: Women and Disposability: Photographing Incarceration ………………..87 Disposability, women, and the prison system …………………………………...87 Biopolitics of prison photography ………………………………………………92 The problem with prison photography—a genealogy …………………………..94 State violence outside the prison: LaToya Ruby Frazier ………………………..99 gendered and racialized biopolitics of reproduction …………………...105 intergenerational, feminist documentary ………………………………111 slow violence ……………………………………………………….….117 Feminist research inside the prison: Jane Evelyn Atwood …………………….121 modernist optics of the prison …………………………….…………....127 female incarceration and abuse ………………………………………...130 Counter-documentary prison portraits: Kirsten S. Wilkins ………................…137 social life of prison portraiture …………………………………………142 Counter-histories and alternative documentary practices ……………………...149 Chapter Three: Youth, Digital Platforms, and Photography of the Commons …..…….158 Pepsi, the commons, and the space of appearance ……………………….…….158 Youth and technology …………………...……………………………….…….165 Instagram and Echo/Sight ……………………………………………………...175 The photography of the commons and appropriation ………………………….190 Appearance and the commons: what can be witnessed …………………….….204 Conclusion: Archival Ethics and the Photographic Unknown ……………...…………216 ! vii! Coda ……………………………………………………………………………………235 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...237 ! viii! LIST OF IMAGES 23: Found photograph, New Orleans, LA. 2006 82: Peter van Agtmael. IRAQ, Baghdad. 2006 Peter van Agtmael. KUWAIT, Ali Al Salem. 2006 83: Peter van Agtmael. Pine Ridge, South Dakota. 2014