[ecrea] CALL FOR PAPERS: Strange Images in Familiar Contexts

*CALL FOR PAPERS: 114th AAA Annual Meeting, “Familiar Strange”, Denver,
Colorado, Nov. 18-22 2015*



*Strange Images in Familiar Contexts: Discomfort, (In)visibility, and the
Politics of Recognition*



Session organizers: Aryo Danusiri (Harvard University) and Annemarie
Samuels (University of Amsterdam)

Discussant: Patricia Spyer (Leiden University)

Section: Society for Cultural Anthropology





This panel inquires into the discomfort caused by the appearance of
strange, unexpected, images in everyday spaces. We specifically ask how the
manifestation of such images both reveals and affects the social and
political contexts in which they appear. Unexpected images may be
familiarized, refuted, or ignored. They may remain marginal or become
popular, or they are forbidden and altogether removed. Their presence in
itself and the ways in which they bring into being and affect a public or
multiple publics may illuminate social change and political possibilities.



How are powerful, disturbing, or alternative images mediated and how do
particular forms of mediation contribute to their affective force? What
political projects of recognition, visibility or silencing may underlie
their appearances? In what ways may strange images in familiar places
prefigure or foreclose possibilities of social change?



By addressing these questions we take a cue from the recent volume “Images
that Move” (Spyer and Steedly 2013), which brings attention to the ways in
which images are “moving” in both the transitive and intransitive meanings
of that word. One of the themes that this volume highlights is the
affective potency of images, which is, as the editors point out, often
related to their political power.  By focusing on images that are strange
and unexpected, and that disturb the familiarity of the spaces in which
they appear we take up on this issue of foregrounding the political and
affective capacities of the visual in one specific way. “Strange” images
may bring to attention what lies within their frames as well as cover up or
distract from that which they exclude. Anthropological inquiry into the
ways in which these images affect their audiences and reveal the worlds
that they disturb will shed further light on the insecure lines between
transparency and invisibility, and the power of seeing and being seen.





Spyer, Patricia and Mary Steedly eds. 2013 *Images that Move*. Santa Fe:
School for Advanced Research Press.


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