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Paper short abstract:

Considering three sets of images from Myanmar's recent wars on terror, this paper argues that with very differing political implications, the Myanmar military, resistance forces, and human rights groups share a totalizing aesthetic politics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers three sets of images. The first depicts a pipeline explosion along the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor; the second, a Rohingya village burned to the ground, captured by satellite; and the third, a black-site detention center in Yangon where detainees have detailed being tortured—also captured by satellite. Each set of images traces to Myanmar’s recent wars on terror, whether the Myanmar state’s violence against Rohingya Muslims—justified as a war on terror against Rohingya extremists—or, more contentiously, the mass “people’s war” against the new military junta, referred to by resistance fighters as a terrorist organization. The paper argues that, paradoxically, the junta, resistance forces, and human rights organizations share a totalizing aesthetic drive. Whereas the state closely controls its (in)visibility—by using black sites, internet cuts, communication controls, and emergency provisions—its critics seek to refuse and reveal the state’s dark geographies, hidden acts, and obscure power. Resistance fighters map and target logistics projects that finance the “terrorist” junta; human rights groups use satellite imagery to disclose state atrocities. Juxtaposing transparency and opacity, the paper reconsiders the forensic aesthetics used to investigate counter-terrorist violence elsewhere, from US empire to the occupation of Palestine. Contra the liberal politics of transparency that underwrites that aesthetic, I suggest that Myanmar resistance forces’ logistical mapping provides an alternate cartography of power. It is totalizing, too, but in a way that sets the junta’s totalitarianism within a broader imperial tableau, wherein another totalizing form—that of capital—looms large.