Moral Limits of Self-Representation and Disaster Sites
My paper published in the Journal of Media Practice 16(3) entitled, Self-representation
and the disaster event: self-imaging, morality and immortality, examines the ethics of capturing and imaging the self against disaster sites.
Abstract,
There's growing interest in the
notion of the ‘selfie’ in the digital age. Much of the interest has been making
sense of this digital genre pervasive in its manifestation while implicating
the individual and hinging on public gaze in digital platforms. As a form of
self-representation, the selfie reveals the complex interplay of identity
politics and self-curation where the self is amenable to multiple iterations of
public gaze. This article, drawing on this complex interplay, inspects a
specific phenomenon in this selfie culture where there is a tendency to picture
oneself against the scene of trauma or tragedy. The ‘disaster selfie’ or
‘disaster porn’ as a particular genre invokes questions of the moral limit in
the objectification and aestheticisation of self. This article explores the
moral politics of disaster selfies, the role of the abject and our quest for
immortality where these invoke a wider crisis for visuality and image ethics
online.
