Abstract Book of the 7th Global Conference on Women’s Studies
Year: 2025
[PDF]
From Visual Investigation to Consciousness Rising; Butler’s Contribution to Ethical Discourse
Rebecca Tognazzi
ABSTRACT:
My proposal originates from the publication Reading Visual Investigations: Between Advocacy, Journalism, and Law edited by Lisa Luksch and Andreas Lepik – which is the written transposition of the exhibition held in Munich at the Pinakothek des Moderne from October 2024 to February 2025. The work led by the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) brought together architecture experts with human rights organisations and collective research groups like Bellingcat, SITU and CST. The results that came from this collaboration, using image-based investigations, are stark, factual examples of proven human rights violations. Following one of the seven case studies presented in the book, my intention is to use Butler’s ethical framework, explained in Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation, to address Bora Erden’s concern about the limits of the argumentative potency of visual investigation, which faces not only specific hardships, such as tunnel vision and blind faith, but also a broader disconnection from the suffering of the other. Butler’s words enlighten us on the urgency of the political institutions to understand how cohabitation on Earth is the precondition of ethics itself. My thesis is that visual research, as a vast and expanding field, not only finds a transdisciplinary companion in architecture, but can also be enriched by feminist studies. Specifically, here we encounter Judith Butler’s ethical suggestions, which fit perfectly into her feminist critical theory theses, confirming her as one of the most authoritative voices not only in queer theory, but in all contemporary philosophy.
Keywords: architecture; cohabitation; ethical obligations; human rights violations; solidarity