Authenticity/Theatricality: World spectatorship and the drama of the image

The image of the disaster at sea—the shipwreck staged for the spectator—is a highly conventionalised form of aesthetic encounter with the suffering of others, whose iconic operation serves as a reminder of the inseparability of the event from its mode of representation. The drama of the image, the chapter argues, remains dependent on the visual dramaturgy of the event of representation (its ‘theatricality’), and the construction of a spectator position framing the image’s withdrawal from the world of pure presentation (its ‘authenticity’). The chapter investigates the relationship between the apparent authenticity of the scenes depicted and their reliance on the theatricality of the of the image as the locus of the spectator’s political subjectification. It argues that the image functions as a drama staged to enable the construction of world spectatorship as a privileged political standpoint, and demonstrates how this position operates within a racialized representational regime.