Visual Epistemologies and Imaginary Thinking in Human Rights

• In Event: Visual Epistemologies and Human Rights

Abstract

Discussing the common themes on this panel and building on the work of Santos and Boltanski, this presentation presses for a next iteration, a further advance in visual epistemologies, striving for an imaginative thinking that would reposition human rights issues. Such a repositioning becomes necessary at a time of global anxieties and deep concerns about the future of human rights. Incorporating the visual and imagining beyond it could strengthen the ability of human rights frameworks to respond to global injustice and abuses of power. Images cut across the cultural, political and legal mechanisms that define human rights. And imagination, illuminating the way, helps redefine and ferret out rights violations.

Author

• Sandra Ristovska, University of Colorado Boulder