Paper short abstract:

Images are critical and not merely incidental to political action. By focusing on the visible as “equally a pathway to the nonvisible” (MacDougall 2006:269), this paper considers visual practices as choreographies of sensorial embodiment and consciousness with transformative possibilities.

Paper long abstract:

"In South Africa, a woman is more likely to be raped than to learn how to read!!" This quote appeared on the back of some female protesters' purple t-shirts as they gathered in front of a Johannesburg courthouse in late 2009. The back of other t-shirts displayed different commentary while the front of each featured the uniform slogan "Solidarity with ☥ who speak out!!" The women, gathered in support of the plaintiff of a gang rape case, explicitly acknowledged the visual as crucial to collective dissent.

Indeed images are critical and not merely incidental to political action. Activists employ rich visual practices including posters, banners, clothing, gestures, symbols, photography, and video to mobilize. This paper investigates the visual as a realm of contestation through an advocacy project that sought to empower South African women as producers of female-focused human rights imagery. In workshops, participants created body-maps, posters, banners, sculptures, and t-shirts that they exhibited in venues and demonstrations such as at the courthouse described above. Through such imagery, they contested stereotypic representations and silences around women's experiences of rape, domestic violence, hate-crimes including the "corrective rape" and murder of lesbians, HIV/AIDS persecution, migrant insecurity, and economic exploitation. By focusing on the visual as "equally a pathway to the nonvisible" (MacDougall 2006:269), the paper advances a phenomenological approach considering these practices as choreographies of sensorial embodiment and consciousness. My analysis suggests that by rendering previous exclusions visible, these activists not only impacted the social terrain but also forged radically transformed subjectivities.