Representations, Images and the Global Landscape: Locating Culture in International Security

Rather than conceiving representation as the sublime or as a tool of resistance, we need to conceive it as a site of contemporary issues. Through examining the ways in which contemporary representation serves as a fulcrum for issues, we might then re-conceive the possibility of resistance or reflection. Representation here refers to the depiction of moralities, emotions, ideas, and beliefs. A word of caution: the character of contemporary representation is not a pretty picture (no pun intended). Images of suicide bombings, the AIDS-HIV pandemic, landmines, and barbed wire provide a wide range of representations and need to be understood as paradoxical. Each example is aestheticized in a particular way. Representations of conflict and security, for example, often centre on “timeless insoluble tragedies”, “irrational hatred”, maiming, and sub-humans. Representation appears in a technological/ social/cultural context in which images drift out of the confines of the gallery and migrate to television, the web, hand-held devices, gameboys, and other wireless devices. This is a context in which distinctions between “high art ” and “popular culture ” are increasingly difficult to delineate. I argue that in the context of tragedy, hatred, maiming and sub-humanization, the aesthetic turn in IR has to be posited as community, humanity, and justice. Viewing art as a narrative of community is relevant for international relations in a number of ways. For one thing, representation assists us in understanding a world that is no longer strictly bound or defined by states. It helps us to understand the “Horro