engleski

On unattainable dreams about love

In this paper I will offer a reading of a newspaper photograph that formed a part of the visual image of the Republic of Croatia during the so-called migrant crisis during the winter of 2015. In this photograph a young officer can be seen holding a migrant child in his arms. The photograph was taken in Tovarnik, at the moment when a group of migrants including the child's parents, were being interviewed as a part of migrant registration protocols. Through my reading of this photograph’s narrative, I want to show the levels of meaning embedded in the selected visual script. I suggest it is an attempt to represent the state as a supportive or maternal figure. Combining the notion of ‘(radical) support’ in the way that Judith Butler presents it in her account “Notes toward a performative theory of assembly”, with L. Berlant’s concept of “emotion in operation” and S. Ruddick’s concept of “maternal thinking”, as well as taking insight from S. Sontag’s discussion about the nature of photography, I will argue in favour of the thesis that the meaningful cargo of the photograph is a dubious attempt by the establishment to inscribe radical love in a repressive context. In other words, I read the photograph/picture as an unattainable dream about love as a radical, public response to horror.

migration, photography, ways of seing

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