The sentimentalist paradox: on the normative and visual foundations of humanitarianism

Abstract

This paper examines how Western humanitarianism has attempted to work through its simultaneous commitment to individualized moral universalism and ambivalence about substantive global egalitarianism via what is identified as humanitarian sentimentalism, namely an ensemble of narrative and visual mechanisms designed to cultivate charitable moral sentiments among Euro-American publics toward victims of humanitarian crises in the global South. After briefly discussing how the aforementioned ambivalence is rooted in the founding philosophical principles of humanitarianism, the paper examines the visual economy of humanitarian sentimentalism, constituted through four iconographic tropes found in the history of Western representation of humanitarian emergencies and injustices (personification, massification, rescue, and care), each of which aims to trigger sentimentalizing responses on the part of viewers. Hence, it is argued that if the Western humanitarian movement's dependence on visually based sentimentalism has been effective in generating a sense of concern for distant others, such concern has not been converted into a more radical and egalitarian set of political practices of global solidarity, which would aim structurally to transform the current world order in an egalitarian manner to tackle the systemic sources of humanitarian crises.

Keywords:

• humanitarianism
• sentimentalism
• visual representation
• global justice
• suffering

Acknowledgments

The research and writing of this paper were made possible by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would also like to thank the organizers and participants of ‘Bonds and Boundaries: New Perspectives on Justice and Culture’ (Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, March 2010) and ‘Thinking Beyond Redistribution: A Workshop on Global Justice’ (University of Toronto, October 2012), at which earlier versions of this paper were presented, notably Monique Deveaux and Kathryn Walker. Thanks are also due to the following research assistants for their work on various parts of this project: Mike Christensen, Marcia Oliver, Jazba Singh, Philip Steiner, and Steve Tasson.

Notes

Throughout the paper, I will be referring to humanly constructed and conflict-based humanitarian crises and emergencies (famine, genocide, civil war, etc.), not those caused primarily by natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, etc.). I want to thank Craig Calhoun for specifying the parameters of this distinction for me. Moreover, the term ‘humanitarian crisis’ refers not only to situational emergencies, but also to structural injustices violating principles of human dignity (e.g. slavery).

For heuristic purposes, the phrase ‘Euro-American humanitarian movement’ is used to designate the constellation of Western humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, to underscore the ideological diversity of this constellation, it is important to distinguish between three major strands in the Western humanitarian field: a religious stream grounded in Christian faith that itself contains evangelical and humanist poles (World Vision, Secours catholique, etc.), a liberal stream sustaining norms of neutrality and immediate rescue of victims (the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Save the Children, etc.), and a critical stream that questions this norm of neutrality and the current world order (ActionAid, Secours populaire français, etc.).

A distinction should be established between the necessary existence of moral sentiments (emotions grounding a subject's inner morality and found in the self's human nature, understood here in the tradition of philosophical anthropology instead of that of socio-biology) and the problematic status of sentimentalism (the production and manipulation of feelings by social institutions and discourses in a manner that privileges emotional experience rather than political action). Whereas certain moral sentiments (empathy, outrage, revolt, etc.) and a sense of humanity (T. Campbell 2007) in the face of forms of domination, exploitation, and structural injustices can assist emancipatory political projects devoted to ending suffering, sentimentalism tends to depoliticize such systemic issues by reducing them to a matter of caring about such suffering via passifying emotions (pity, sympathy, etc.).

See the Oxford English Dictionary Online, consulted on 15 February 2010.

Jean Pictet, one of the ICRC's most important legal and philosophical figures, was explicit about Christianity's impact on the humanitarian worldview: ‘Charity is above all an expression of Christian morality and is synonymous with love for one's neighbour’ (Pictet 1979).

The bolded and italicized passage is a quotation from Lossier (1958, 224). Emphasis in original.

I want to thank Renisa Mawani for drawing my attention to Festa's and Rai's books.

These films were screened during the 10th International Congress of the Red Cross (1921) in Geneva for the organization's delegates and the general public. Newspaper reports at the time describe the sensational effect that these films had on audiences that viewed them (ICRC 2005).

Although most of the still and moving images of these famines were created by media organizations rather than humanitarian NGOs per se, close collaborative relations existed between the two institutions: many photojournalists, camerapersons, and television news reporters gained access to the sites of these famines with the assistance of aid workers; others were commissioned by humanitarian agencies to visually document these same famines.

The evocation of archetypical artworks is not intended to signify that the history of photographic and cinematic representation of humanitarian crises is derived from art (thus denying the relative symbolic autonomy of photography or film), nor to claim that such archetypes are the iconographic origins of their corresponding conventions. Rather, I am interested in similarities of symbolic structures over time, as well as the identification of both consistencies and shifts in patterns of signification.

The year provided in parentheses after an image's description is those of its publication, rather than of the corresponding event or situation to which it refers. This photograph was reproduced extensively in Congo Reform Association print campaigns and lantern lecture. It was also part of a collage in Mark Twain's satirical pamphlet, King Leopold's Soliloquy (Twain 1905, 41), and is reproduced in (Sliwinski 2006, 352).

The image was taken in the town of Buguruslan and was published in several newspapers and NGO bulletins as well as postcards at the time. It is reproduced in the Nansen Electronic Photographic Archive (file 6a053): accessed November 12, 2009. http://nabo.nb.no/trip?_t=0&_b=NANSEN_ENG&_r=1072&_s=E&_n=0&_q=10&_l=www_eng_l

For the famine in Biafra, see, inter alia, advertisements by UNICEF on page 10 of the 18 September 1968 issue of The Times (of London), and by Oxfam on page 17 of the 27 July 1968 issue of the same newspaper. For the Ethiopian famine, see the television news reports by the BBC's Michael Buerk (broadcast on October 24, 1984) and the CBC's Brian Stewart (broadcast on November 1, 1984), accessed January 20, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOj_6OyuJc and accessed January 20, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFPr-zAXNuc

Taken by photojournalist Kevin Carter, the picture was originally published in The New York Times on March 26, 1993 and won a Pulitzer Prize.

This photograph, entitled ‘Native Prisoners at Boma Taking the Air’, was published by Morel (1904, 192) and subsequently circulated by the Congo Reform Association.

Three such photographs appeared in a cablegram from the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief dating from 1917.

The photographs were taken in the city of Buzuluk in December 1921. See the Nansen Electronic Photo Archive (files 6a047 and 6a043); accessed November 8, 2009. http://nabo.nb.no/trip?_t=0&_b=NANSEN_ENG&_r=1091&_s=E&_n=0&_q=10&_l=www_eng_l and http://nabo.nb.no/trip?_t=0&_b=NANSEN_ENG&_r=1099&_s=E&_n=0&_q=10&_l=www_eng_l An article from the Swiss newspaper Le Temps (Haller, 2003) mentions its widespread distribution; the article is republished on the ICRC's website: accessed October 25, 2009. http://www.icrc.org/web/fre/sitefre0.nsf/html/5QKJLH For instance, the image was printed on page 5 of the 20 April 1922 issue of the Manchester Guardian and on page 135 of the 11 February 1922 issue of L'Illustration, reprinted in (Cosandey 1998, 6). A postcard version of it was published by a Belgian organization devoted to Russian famine relief; accessed November 12, 2009; see http://www.artukraine.com/old/famineart/famine10.htm

For instance, page 29 of the 8 September 1968 issue of The New York Times contains an image of a group of starving Biafran children aboard a truck, and page 8 of the 3 March 1969 issue of The Times (of London) carried a photograph of a cart with human remains in Biafra.

In particular, see Salgado's iconic photographs of Ethiopian refugee camps in Bati and Korem during the famine (Salgado 1990, 92–93).

The gendered parallels in this hierarchical relationship are obvious, with the masculine protagonist coming to the rescue of the damsel in distress.

This photograph appeared on page 410 of National Geographic, vol. 36 (1919).

This photograph appeared in the 15 November 1917 issue of The Daily Mirror newspaper.

This photograph was found on page. 249 of May 1922 issue of The Record of the Save the Children Fund (Slim and Sellick, 2002: Reel 1).

See, inter alia, photographs in The New York Times accompanying the articles headlined ‘Aid is Snarled for Starving Millions in Biafra’ (July 3, 1968, 1), and ‘Priest in Lisbon is Link to Missionaries in Biafra’ (August 12, 1968, 2).

See, for instance, the 28 January 1985 cover of People magazine, which featured members of the Kennedy family with children in Ethiopia, and the photograph of Bob Geldof (of Live Aid) surrounded by a group of Ethiopian children on page 7 of the 10 January 1985 issue of The Guardian.

The video, produced by the US NGO Invisible Children, accessed April 30, 2012, can be viewed at <http://vimeo.com/37119711.

I would like to thank participants from the ‘Thinking Beyond Redistribution’ workshop at the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics (19–20 October 2012) for their assistance regarding the worth of a feminist ethic of care.

The photograph appeared on page 8 of the 12 November 1915 issue of The Manchester Guardian.

The photograph was published on page 296 of the 15 June 1922 issue of The Record of the Save the Children Fund (Slim and Sellick 2002).

This image by Alonzo Foringer was entitled ‘The Greatest Mother in the World’ – making explicit the aforementioned gendered and maternal character of care – was part of a poster reproduced millions of times as part of a highly successful campaign in the USA. It is found here: accessed February 1, 2011. http://www.redcross.org/museum/exhibits/posters.asp

The photograph appears on page 21 of the 15 October 1985 issue of The Guardian.

This photograph, by photojournalist James Nachtwey, was published on the cover of the 4 October 2004 issue of Time magazine. It can be viewed here: accessed February 1, 2011. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,1101041004,00.html