Aesthetics, Reality and New Warfare

The ‘aesthetic turn’ in IR suggests that research on war and conflict is enriched by a new focus on visual culture. This paper explores the visuality of conflict but also asks how and where visual culture enlists popular support for militarism.How does a ‘war of images’ support war on the ground? To explore questions of power and public truth in relation to military conflict I look to the work of various contemporary visual artists, including Richard Mosse, Willie Doherty, Mona Hatoum, Cuco Fusco and Raeda Saadeh. This paper considers why visual artists draw attention to modes of visuality at work in military spaces, and how they explore the impact of war on the body, in order to raise questions about gender, power, normativity and racial identity.