Multicomputer Networks

Political acts are encoded in medial forms--punch holes on a card, images on a livestream, tweets about events unfolding in real time--that have force, shaping people as subjects andforming the contours of what is sensible, legible, and visible. In doing so they define the terms ofpolitical possibility and create terrain for political acts. Sensible Politicsconsiders the constitutive role played by aesthetic and performative techniques in the staging ofclaims by nongovernmental activists. Attending to political aesthetics means focusing not on adisembodied image that travels under the concept of art or visual culture, nor on a preformed domainof the political that seeks subsequent expression in media form. Instead it requires bringing thetwo realms together into the same analytic frame. A diverse group of contributors, from arthistorians, anthropologists, and political theorists to artists, filmmakers, and architects,considers the interaction of politics and the visual in such topics as the political consequences ofa photograph taken by an Israeli soldier in a Palestinian house in Ramallah; AIDS activism; imagesof social suffering in Iran; the "forensic architecture" of claims to truth; and the"Make Poverty History" campaign. Transcending disciplines, they trace a broader imagecomplex whereby politics is brought to visibility through the mediation of specific cultural formsthat mix the legal and the visual, the hermeneutic and the technical, the political and theaesthetic. Their contributions offer critical insight into the practices of mediation whereby thepolitical becomes manifest.