Decolonizing visuality in security studies: reflections on the death of Osama bin Laden (original) (raw)

Abstract

This article examines connections between visuality and security, utilizing United States (US) representations of the death of Osama bin Laden to call for decolonizing visuality in security studies. While there has been increasing research in visuality and International Relations, there is less emphasis on a postcolonial visuality approach to security studies. Concerns raised by postcolonial scholars regarding power relations, being looked at (and categorized) and issues of race and gender can inform theorizing and understanding of visuality in security studies. This article analyzes pictorial, textual, and architectural representations of the death of bin Laden in order to note what was made invisible and thus forgotten in the construction of official US accounts of the killing. It argues that adopting a decolonial approach not only identifies these invisibilities in the dominant US narrative, but also directs attention to how a shift in standpoint leads to other issues, identities, and meanings about the event (and about ‘security’) being foregrounded.

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