The childhood of human rights

Journal of Visual Culture http://vcu.sagepub.com/

The Childhood of Human Rights: The Kodak on the Congo
Sharon Sliwinski Journal of Visual Culture 2006 5: 333 DOI: 10.1177/1470412906070514 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/5/3/333

Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Journal of Visual Culture can be found at: Email Alerts: http://vcu.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://vcu.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/5/3/333.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Nov 28, 2006 What is This?

Downloaded from vcu.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DE GOIAS on August 28, 2012

journal of visual culture

The Childhood of Human Rights: The Kodak on the Congo Sharon Sliwinski
Abstract

This article examines the Congo reform movement’s use of atrocity photographs in their human rights campaign (c. 1904–13) against Belgian King Leopold, colonial ruler of the Congo Free State. This material analysis shows that human rights are conceived by spectators who, with the aid of the photographic apparatus, are compelled to judge that crimes against humanity are occurring to others. The article also tracks how this judgement has been haunted by the potent wish to undo the suffering witnessed.
Keywords

atrocity Congo crimes against humanity phantasmagoria photography
● ● ●

●

human rights

●

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. (Lytton Strachey, 1986[1918]: 9)

Forgotten Origins
Hannah Arendt (1994[1965]) was mistaken to think that crimes against humanity were crimes that only appeared when the Nazi regime attempted to exterminate the Jewish people in the middle of the 20th century (p. 268). The mistake does not, however, undo her insight about the importance of the