UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Visualizing Violence: The Ethics of Photographic Evidence in the Domestic Violence Trial and Popular Culture A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Communication by Kelli D. Moore Committee in charge: Professor Patrick Anderson, Chair Professor Lisa Cartwright Professor Kelly Gates Professor Marcel Henaff Professor Roshanak Kheshti 2013 Copyright Kelli D. Moore, 2013 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Kelli D. Moore is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2013 iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my family. v EPIGRAPH The extent to which the solution of theoretical riddles is the task of practice and effected through practice, just as true practice is the condition of a real and positive theory, is shown, for example, in fetishism. --Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 Pictures are the things that have been marked with the stigmata of personhood; they exhibit both physical and virtual bodies; they speak to us sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively --W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures “Really” Want? In an analogy both terms are on an equal footing; ontologically and semiotically. They belong to the each other at the most profound level of their being --Kaja Silverman, Flesh of My Flesh v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iv Epigraph ..........................................................................................................................v Table of Contents .......................................................................................................... vi Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... vii Abstract of the Dissertation.......................................................................................... viii Introduction .....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Visualizing the Complex Agency of Battered Women ................................... 44 Chapter 2 Exile and Survival in the Photography of Ana Mendieta, Donna Ferrato, and Nan Goldin .................................................................................................................. 104 Chapter 3 Advertising the Law: Anti-Domestic Abuse Support Service Advertising Campaigns ................................................................................................................... 153 Chapter 4 Epidermal Reading in the Domestic Violence Courtroom ............................ 181 Conclusion: Visualizing Violence: Photography, Subjectivity, Co-Presence and the Legal Post-Modern ................................................................................................................ 216 References ................................................................................................................... 228 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Cota-Robles Fellowship and Mannason Family Writing Fellowship. This funding was crucial to completing the research and writing components of the dissertation. I thank members of the Communication Department, Stacie Walsh and Jamie Lloyd for your consistently good advice. I will sorely miss your pleasant faces. I owe a great thanks to Gayle Aruta for your tireless assistance navigating the particular bureaucracies attached to being a graduate student as well as the humor required to handle those particularities. Yours was the most welcoming voice I heard from administrators while applying to graduate schools; I never stopped feeling welcomed by you once I decided upon the Communication Department. Live long and prosper, friend! Professors Valerie Hartouni and Robert Horwitz provided guidance at the early stages of my doctoral work. Your questioning of my thought was devastating and inspired me to think harder about that stakes of my project and why it matters to the world. I will always be grateful for the rigor you demanded of my work. I could not have asked for a better dissertation committee: Professor Patrick Anderson; Professor Lisa Cartwright, Professor Kelly Gates, Professor Marcel Henaff and Professor Roshanak Kheshti. Patrick, thank you for the enthusiasm you always brought to our discussions. Your steadfast encouragement nurtured my will to not merely finish the project, but to finish well and to continue to thrive. I owe a tremendous intellectual debt to Lisa Cartwright. Your thought and professional generosity gave me the courage to stake out political positions through my ix writing and speech. Often you have asked me, “Who do you want to be?” Your question reminds me that the world is serious and to be careful; do not stop asking your students this question. I have also benefitted from the generosity of Kelly Gates and Marcel Henaff. Thank you for setting a fine teaching example and for recommending me for opportunities to workshop and publish my work. This dissertation would not have been possible without the contributions from administrative and law professionals working in a variety of institutions. My work in these pages is dedicated to the efforts of those who took the time to explain the work they do to me. In particular, Attorneys and Administrative Staff at: the San Diego Office of the Primary Public Defender; Office of the San Diego City Attorney; San Diego County Superior Court; San Diego Police Department; Family Justice Center; San Diego Museum of Photography; Center of Court Innovation and, Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. A number of kindred spirits read (or listened to me talk about) my work over the years and were steadfast friends and to whom I will always be grateful: Acadia, Alana Zilberg, Ali, Bernake, Benjamin Balthaser, Lauren Berliner, Michael Cole, Charlotte Dereppe, Desdemona, Dayo Gore, Sora Han, Monica Hoffman, April Huff, Emma Johnson, Nadine Kozak, Olga Kuchinskaya, Robert Lecusay, Liz Losh, Alain Loute, Erin Malone, Arianne Miller, Amy Motlagh, Chandra Mukerji, Pixel, Leonora Paula, Andy Rice, Sage, Scribbles, Jonathan Shafran, Pawan Singh, and Sabrina Strings. ix VITA Education Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, 2013 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego, 2009 Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, Wellesley College, 1998 Research Areas Visual culture; law and society; feminist jurisprudence; performance studies; science and technology studies; aesthetics Work in Progress My current project examines the communicative practices between legal actors, institutions and interpretive communities as they make presumably collective decisions about how to remedy crimes of gender-based violence. I focus on the visual culture of domestic violence adjudication and prevention. This work traces the entry of photography in to the court system as a novel form of evidence. I then examine historical representations of domestic violence in public health media. I am particularly interested in the production of digital images of battered women as evidence photography and the court procedures they engender to protect their status as ‘evidence.’ Publications Forthcoming. Moore, Kelli. “Visualizing the Complex Agency of Battered Women: Legal Practices of Surveillance through Photography,” in Feminist Surveillance Studies, Rachel Dobrofsky and Shoshana Magnet, eds. (under contract, Duke University Press) In Press. Moore, Kelli. “Photographie Feminine: Exile and Survival in the Photography of Ana Mendieta, Donna Ferrato, and Nan Goldin,” Anglistica: An Interdisciplinary Journal Wanda Balzano and Silvana Carotenuto, editors. Moore, K. 2004. Op Data, 2001: Red Hook, Brooklyn: Community Assessment and Perceptions of Quality of Life, Safety, and Services. New York: Center for Court Innovation. Moore, K. D. 2007. "Views of Safety and Quality of Life: Results of an Annual Survey in Red Hook, Brooklyn." Pp. 267-278 in Documenting Results: Research on Problem-Solving Justice, eds. G. Berman, M. Rempel, and R. V. Wolf, New York: Center for Court Innovation. ix Conference Presentations Invited Speaker University of California, Irvine Presented: “Visualizing the Battered Woman Syndrome: Affinities between the Science of Expert Testimony and 1980s Feminist Art Criticism,” event co- sponsored by the Center in Law, Society and Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies May 2012 International Conference on Human Rights and the Humanities Panel Organizer/Presenter: “Trauma Re-read and Embodied: Enunciating the Subject of Human Rights,” American University of Beirut, Lebanon, May 2012 Cultural Studies Association Presented: “Visualizing the Battered Woman Syndrome: Affinities between the Science of Expert Testimony and Visual Evidence,” University of California, San Diego, CA March 2012 Association for the Study of Law, Culture & The Humanities Presented: Images and Law Panel, “Visualizing the Battered Woman Syndrome: Affinities between the Science of Expert Testimony and Visual Evidence” Texas Wesleyan School of Law, Forth Worth, TX March 2012 Performance Studies International 16: Performing Publics Presented: “Performing Wounds: Liveness and Performance in Imaging Battered Women;” Respondent: “Performative Responses to Trauma” panel York University & Ontario