UC Berkeley

Exposing Abjection: Racial Violence in 19th and 20th Century Photography examines photographs of racial violence and interrogates Western subjecthood’s reliance on representations of the racial other as abject. Photographs from the Holocaust, American lynchings, the Ku Klux Klan, and anthropological portraits comprise the chapters of this dissertation and their analyses. These images are traditionally seen as displays of otherness and I propose a revised spectatorship that instead asks what kind of self is being developed through the act of looking at these photographic documents. In doing so, this dissertation moves away from the hypervisuality of racialized bodies and works toward decentering spectacle for the purposes of exposing the visual and cultural rhetoric that has been utilized in developing the narrative of a racialized humanity.

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary engagement with the fields of visual studies, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural studies that specifically addresses the role of photography in the development of a racialized humanity. In particular, the psychoanalytical concepts of abjection, whole body-image, and coherent bodily ego facilitate my examination of the photographs’ function as both historical documents and personal mementos. By considering both the historical significances and personal meanings that the images document, I ultimately argue that the symbolic language of the visual rhetoric has the capacity to enact and lead to actual acts of racial violence. As such, examining the visual rhetoric in 19th and 20th century photographs of racial violence makes possible alternative interpretations that do not rely on the overdetermination of harmed, racialized bodies. Through a study of the photographs, I examine how our viewing of them can disrupt rather than maintain notions of humanity that require the abjection of the racial other.