AestheticsofTerror_MS_Author_Copy.pdf (313.18 kB)
Terrorism, governmentality and the simulated city: the Boston Marathon bombing and the search for suspect two
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 03:00 authored by Robert TopinkaThis article examines the online circulation of a photograph of the immediate aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings taken by David Green, a Boston Marathon runner. The photograph fortuitously captured an image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger Tsarnaev brother, running from the scene. Initially, Tsarnaev went unnoticed by online message board users and FBI investigators – he was just another face in the urban crowd. However, after he was identified as suspect two, he emerged in the photograph as the figure of terror, the condensed embodiment of the spectacular attack, and thus as a spectre, a figure whose appearance in the archive of the past haunts the future. The author examines how this spectral emergence simultaneously reveals the attack terrorism launches against everyday mediations and how everyday mediations respond to terrorist spectacle. He argues that photography sustains vernacular practices that also support the practices of urban governmentality. Understanding urban governmentality thus requires attending to the urban archive of visual mediation in which the relationships between past and present, image and reality, and surveillance and spectacle are always contingent and open to revision.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Visual CommunicationISSN
1470-3572Publisher
SAGE PublicationsExternal DOI
Issue
3Volume
15Page range
351-370Department affiliated with
- Media and Film Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2016-09-21First Open Access (FOA) Date
2016-09-21First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2016-09-21Usage metrics
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