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Visual (Re)membrance and the Democratic Sublime:
A Rhetorical History of "the Girl in the Photograph"John Louis Lucaites Indiana University
Robert Hariman Drake UniversitySince its introduction in the early part of the 19th century, photography has often been identified as an important "democratizing" medium. Similarly, recent arguments concerning the "pictorial turn" and the cottage industry of publication on "visual culture" together point to an increasing interest in and anxiety about the presence and significance of visual representation and remembrance in late-modern democratic society. Although much of the attention has been drawn to film, television, and digital media, photojournalism remains an important representational practice. We believe it has become an increasingly important site for foundational negotiations within late-modern liberal democratic public culture: the interplay of verbal and visual modalities within any discursive context, and the role of the print media in public opinion formation amidst a larger social imaginary created by electronic and digital representation.
In this essay we examine the role of visual (re)membrance in the performance of public judgment in contemporary liberal democratic political culture. In particular we focus attention on the ways in which photojournalism is implicated in and by the constitution of a political culture that features a "democratic sublime," a rhetoric that articulates the extreme problems and possibilities of "democracy" and "representation." The focus of our study will be a rhetorical history of the usages and appropriations of Nick Ut's "Accidental Napalm," one of the most recognized and iconic photographs of the American experience in Vietnam.
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