Humane Insight: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death

by Courtney R. Baker

In the history of black America, the image of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body has long been looked at by others from a safe distance. Courtney Baker questions the relationship between the spectator and victim and urges viewers to move beyond the safety of the "gaze" to cultivate a capacity for humane insight toward representations of human suffering. Utilizing the visual studies concept termed the "look," Baker interrogates how the notion of humanity was articulated and recognized in oft-referenced moments within the African American the graphic brutality of the 1834 Lalaurie affair; the photographic exhibition of lynching, Without Sanctuary ; Emmett Till's murder and funeral; and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Contemplating these and other episodes, Baker traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity used the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice. An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2015

About the author

Courtney R. Baker is Associate Professor of English at University of California, Riverside. Previously, she was co-founder and inaugural chair of Black Studies at Occidental College. She earned her B.A. cum laude from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from Duke University. She is author of the book, Humane Insight: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death (2015), which explores the long history of African American visual activism. Her writing has appeared in the exhibition catalog of A Site of Struggle: American Art Responds to Antiblack Violence (2021) and the award-winning volume, Black Cultural Production after Civil Rights (2019).

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really useful examination of the history of images of black suffering. A great resource to contextualize contemporary images of black lives lost to police brutality.