Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism

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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in February 2017. Images tap into attitudes, but not always in the same way for every viewer. It was after taking a filmmaking class himself, while working at Manchester University several years ago, that Professor Callahan first became interested in making short films. Although he had studied visual politics since his early career, he hadn’t previously worked on the other side of the camera.

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Hoffmann, H., and K.-J. Maaß (eds.). 1994. Freunde oder Fratze? Das Bild von Deutschland in der Welt und die Aufgaben der Kulturpolitik. Frankfurt: Campus. Browning, C. 2015. Nation branding, National Self-esteem and the Constitution of Subjectivity in late modernity. Foreign Policy Analysis 11 (2): 195–214.GIZ. 2015a. Germany in the eyes of the world. https://www.giz.de/en/mediacenter/3361.html (27 August 2015). The domino effect of the Arab uprisings speaks of images as possessing the potential to activate the viewer, not because they impose a uniform meaning – images are always open to interpretation, negotiation and rejection – but because the image can be an empowering agent, enabling citizens to perform a meta-narrative of political agency. The Arab Spring revolutions were people’s revolutions, in which the image of the singular leader was erased, to be replaced with the image of the multitude. It is the people who are now the political agents of the Arab world. Chambers, M. 2015. VW scandal threatens “Made in Germany” image. Reuters 22 September, http://www.reuters.com/article/usa-volkswagen-germany-image-idUSL5N11S38X20150922 (25 September 2015). Smale, A. and S. Erlanger. 2016. Election of Trump leaves Merkel as the Liberal West’s Last Defender. New York Times, 13 November.