Pointers on answering Chapter 11 case study questions

1. Why do images play an important role in global politics?

To answer this question, think back to the basic poststructuralist assumption that representations are a core medium through which different entities of IR are defined, ‘mapped’ and consequently produced (p. 2-4). Within a particular configuration of power relations, representations of such ‘things’ are thus an integral means through which knowledge about them is produced. If we view images as one mode of representation, then it allows us to ask how the ‘thing’ the image seeks to represent is made meaningful through it. It tells us, in other words, how it is narrated and thus reveals what assumptions are made about it. This carries important implications in unveiling agents’ actions in relation to such ‘things’.

2. How have images of famines shaped prevailing Western views of Africa and what kind of power relations are implicated in these perspectives?

Images of famine are located along a demarcating line that is premised on a separation of ‘us’ (Western viewers) from ‘them’ (African (usually black) bodies suffering from famine) (p. 33). In doing so, such images reinforce further dichotomizing narratives between ‘the West and the rest’, including those of: developed/underdeveloped, North/South, masculine/feminine, sovereignty/anarchy, etc. Probing these genealogically – that is against the historical emergence of such narratives – what is revealed through such images is a reinscription of a colonial imaginary of ‘Africa’ through ‘Western’ and/or ‘European’ eyes, that essentializes and classifies both entities categorically.