The Politics of Appearances: Unsettling the Anthropology of Images

Recent work in the anthropology of images shares an attunement to the unsettled and unsettling nature of images. Following Spyer's conceptualization of the relationship between images and broader “work on and of appearances”, we argue that this body of scholarship foregrounds the worldmaking and unmaking capacities of images, offering purchase on how images sustain the taken-for-granted contours of a political terrain and provide vital means by which people actively intervene to challenge the boundaries of the seen and unseen. We identify three interrelated arenas of recent scholarship foregrounding the relationship among images, politics, and aesthetics. Movement attends to images’ circulations and unruly eventfulness. Repair examines work that mobilizes images to unsettle received historical knowledge and offer reparative visions. Form considers experiments with images in the making, presentation, and dissemination of knowledge. Each of these arenas of inquiry explores how images open paths for politically consequential feeling, thought, and action.