Seeing Witness: Visuality And The Ethics Of Testimony

Jane Blocker SEEING WITNESS: VISUALITY AND THE ETHICS OF TESTIMONY

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009

On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the United Nations Security Council, laying the groundwork with satellite photographs of chemical weapons facilities for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq....

A dominant theme of Powell's testimony on that day in February was that the witness who is invisible, omniscient, and disembodied is more trustworthy than the witness who is visible, with finite knowledge and human limitations. The photographs he showed . . . were taken from an anonymous, godlike camera, not located in any particular country, but floating in orbit around the earth at a distance from which seemingly the whole of the earth could be taken in. . . .

That they are taken by an orbiting machine with magisterial view of the planet rather than by a human being who may have some vested interest in their interpretation adds considerably to their supposed neutrality, objectivity, and truth value.... In short, it is as though these pictures were taken by God.