December 11, 2007

Which regime is this?

After reading for last week and noting all the different ways images of atrocities are used and talked about, I thought back to our reading of Latour and the two different regimes of representation he mentions. I was wondering which, if either, regime of representation images of atrocities would fit within. Are these images characteristics of the first regime, where "every displacement has to be paid for by a re-formulation" (p. 25)? Or, rather, are they characteristic of the second, scientific regime, where "Each displacement is going to be paid for not by a reformulation but by the reinscription of the same shape on a different medium" (p. 25)?
Perhaps it is images like these that take elements of both regimes and mesh them together, or perhaps it is simply a new, third regime (perhaps the capitalist regime) where images are made simply for the sake of being viewed, rather than to invoke religious feeling in the viewer or to maintain a grasp on "what is really there."

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