TY - JOUR
T1 - Exposed singularity
AU - Edkins, Jenny
N1 - Edkins, J., Exposed singularity, Journal for Cultural Research, Volume 9, Issue 4 October 2005 , pages 359 - 386
RAE2008
PY - 2005/10/4
Y1 - 2005/10/4
N2 - In his photographs of children in displaced persons' camps, Salgado takes each subject seriously. His images dis-place us through their dignity and presence. We are no longer spectators but engaged: each gaze demands a response and produces the self as exposed. Pictures of prisoners from Tuol Sleng in Cambodia take the same form: a single figure facing the camera. Here, however, we are caught in an additional and irresolvable aporia: we are faced with thousands to whom we cannot adequately respond. As Derrida argues, responsibility is only possible by sacrificing ethics: we can respond to one only by sacrificing whatever obliges us to respond to others. In the final set of images considered here, Daravuth's positing of the indistinguishability of victim and perpetrator disturbs any easy response once more. A reading of Nancy alongside and against Derrida points to significant differences in emphasis between the two, and throws further light on the aporia of responsibility. The essay concludes that Nancy's being singular plural is productive in emphasizing the need, politically, to focus not on how we might establish a bond between us, but rather on how it is that we seem separate at all. The photographs expose us to our inevitable engagement or being-with.
AB - In his photographs of children in displaced persons' camps, Salgado takes each subject seriously. His images dis-place us through their dignity and presence. We are no longer spectators but engaged: each gaze demands a response and produces the self as exposed. Pictures of prisoners from Tuol Sleng in Cambodia take the same form: a single figure facing the camera. Here, however, we are caught in an additional and irresolvable aporia: we are faced with thousands to whom we cannot adequately respond. As Derrida argues, responsibility is only possible by sacrificing ethics: we can respond to one only by sacrificing whatever obliges us to respond to others. In the final set of images considered here, Daravuth's positing of the indistinguishability of victim and perpetrator disturbs any easy response once more. A reading of Nancy alongside and against Derrida points to significant differences in emphasis between the two, and throws further light on the aporia of responsibility. The essay concludes that Nancy's being singular plural is productive in emphasizing the need, politically, to focus not on how we might establish a bond between us, but rather on how it is that we seem separate at all. The photographs expose us to our inevitable engagement or being-with.
U2 - 10.1080/14797580500252548
DO - 10.1080/14797580500252548
M3 - Article
SN - 1479-7585
VL - 9
SP - 359
EP - 386
JO - Journal for Cultural Research
JF - Journal for Cultural Research
IS - 4
ER -