Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia

by Karen Strassler

The end of authoritarian rule in 1998 ushered in an exhilarating but unsettled period of democratization in Indonesia. A more open political climate converged with a rapidly changing media landscape, yielding a vibrant and volatile public sphere within which Indonesians grappled with the possibilities and limits of democracy amid entrenched corruption, state violence, and rising forms of intolerance. In Demanding Images Karen Strassler theorizes image-events as political processes in which publicly circulating images become the material ground of struggles over the nation's past, present, and future. Considering photographs, posters, contemporary art, graffiti, selfies, memes, and other visual media, she argues that people increasingly engage with politics through acts of making, circulating, manipulating, and scrutinizing images. Demanding Images is both a closely observed account of Indonesia's turbulent democratic transition and a globally salient analysis of the work of images in the era of digital media and neoliberal democracy. Strassler reveals politics today to be an unruly enterprise profoundly shaped by the affective and evidentiary force of images.

368 pages, Hardcover

Published March 20, 2020

Reviews

[Izzy Bajek · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this for anthro theory and lovedddd the concepts and ideas it covered!!! made me excited for my visual sociology class next sem. but it was also very very dense at times which made it a hard and slow read

[Vannessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and very enjoyable read. The book is designed and laid out beautifully. The visuals and the way they are laid out contribute in their own ways to the book and to the way we read and absorb the book's main themes. Karen Strassler shows her impressive knowledge of Indonesia's political history and how it intertwines with images and how images and image-related events put to the test the extent of Indonesia's democratisation and openness since 1998. I was very sad when the book ended, I wanted to read more!