5 - Proof of Death

Summary

Chapter 5 examines the tensions between obscenity, dignity, and evidence in the context of contemporary humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention. It explores images of torture victims in Syria, which acted as evidence of the atrocities of the al-Assad regime. These images illustrate how obscene photographs must justify themselves as sufficiently obscene to be seen, reinforcing the taboo in its rupture, as a means to spur humanitarian awareness about an atrocity. This is contextualized in the wider context of atrocity images, and the chapter takes up the published photographs of Aylan Kurdi as a shadow case to tease out the dynamics of the functioning of the obscenity norm. The chapter also explores the use of bodies as “proof of death” and the dilemmas this raises about the ambiguous evidentiary value of dead body images. The chapter examines the various ways death images and dead bodies themselves act as evidence, raising questions about how and when the dead are too obscene to be viewed, and when they are situated within a logic about what must be viewed.