“Doing a Lynndie”: Iconography of a Gesture

Hristova, Stefka

doi:10.1080/08949468.2013.833830

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…This "traceable inventory" provides a thematic way to present a narrow subject, e. g., mourning over a body, regardless of the specific subject; alternately, a pose in the inventory may show ecstasy in one venue and grief in an other (Wind, 1937). A Warburgian approach has also been adopted for examining contem porary political moments, particularly those regarding the cruel exercise of power or heighted emotions -unsurprising given that Pathosformeln are indicative of aroused states (Drainville, 2018;Eisenman, 2007;Hristova, 2013).…”

Section: Analysing Image Collections: Breadth and Depthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitally-assisted iconology: A method for the analysis of digital media

Drainville

2023

SComS

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Exploring medium-to-large datasets of social media imagery can be challenging. This paper describes a digitally-assisted iconology, a hybrid methodology that includes machine learning and data analytics for sorting through medium-sized datasets of images that lack metadata to describe their pictorial content. The method plays to the strengths of current digital technologies. Using machine learning, pictures are first clustered in a preliminary stage based upon basic formal presentational characteristics. Thematic analysis follows this preliminary stage, based upon an expansion of Aby Warburg’s “pre-coined expressive values”, which are frequently found in pictures displaying high levels of user reception. Once clustered via these two separate stages, the researcher can then drill down using familiar forms of visual analysis to explore how similar concepts have been rendered in different ways. The analysis may be augmented by exploring the commentary appended to these pictures, which adds a further level of detail providing insight into end-user interpretations. The approach – including its drawbacks – is demonstrated via a consequential dataset of pictures shared on Twitter in 2015, after a Syrian child was found drowned off the Turkish shore. Derivative imagery based upon the original photographs referenced longstanding iconographic themes.

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Section: Analysing Image Collections: Breadth and Depthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digitally-assisted iconology: A method for the analysis of digital media

Drainville

2023

SComS

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“…The River and Fire Collective (2021, p. 101), in their collaboratively written essay, "The fires within us and the rivers we form," make a similar point with regard to the anythingbut-neutral role played by language in anthropological and social scientific writing more broadly: 10 For more on the political uses and implications of the gesture of shooting, see Hall, Goldstein, and Ingrim. (2016) and Hristova (2013); I have also counter-posed that gesture to the gesture of cutting elsewhere (Head, 2020).…”

Section: Part I: "In Your Hands…" Gesturing Within and Against Ethnog...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Necropoetic gestures

Head

2023

Horiz. antropol.

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If necropolitics, according to Achille Mbembe, involves “contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the powers of death,” necropoetics, as proposed here, involves the poetic and gestural interruption of necropolitics. Starting out from a gesture that simulates the act of killing, I ask what sort of anthropology and corresponding mode of writing would be entailed if one were to imaginatively align oneself with that gesture and others like it as they traverse temporal, contextual, and intertextual thresholds - including that between life and death - and the racialized histories recalled thereby. The counter-fabulatory approach taken herein, in pitting the poetic (Black) subtexts of the iterations of this gesture against the varied modes of discourse - ethnographic (part I), historical (part II) and anthropological (part III) - that would capture them, seeks to performatively interrupt the pretense of a neutral language through which necropolitics passes for the continuation of history as usual.

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“…In addition, there are several images that feature one or more service members smiling, giving a ‘thumbs up’ or gesturing directly to the camera. In her article ‘“Doing a Lynndie”: Iconography of a gesture’, Stefka Hristova (2013: 430) notes how the image of Lynndie England posing with her thumb up at Abu Ghraib became translated into a ‘common sense’ and ‘humorous everyday practice’ for some. Specifically, she describes how people posted images of themselves on blogs ‘doing the Lynndie’ as a gesture of humour.…”

Section: Visual Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why do soldiers swap illicit pictures? How a visual discourse analysis illuminates military band of brother culture

MacKenzie

2020

Security Dialogue

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Military service members have been taking and circulating illicit images for decades, and soldier-produced illicit images are a regular and coherent category of international images. Focusing on two case studies – Abu Ghraib images and images of hazing – the argument put forward in this article is that soldier-generated illicit images are not simply photographic evidence, or accidental by-products, of exceptional military activities; rather, these images – and the practices associated with these images – are central to, and reinforce aspects of, military band of brother culture. Soldier-produced illicit images establish a visual vernacular that normalizes particular practices within military communities. Moreover, the practices of producing, circulating and consuming these images convey explicit messages to service members about acceptable behaviour and norms around loyalty and secrecy. A method of visual discourse analysis is developed and employed to examine the acts captured in soldier-generated illicit images as well as the practices linked to the production, circulation and consumption of images. Building on existing work on military culture and images and international relations, this article makes a unique contribution by systematically analysing soldier-produced illicit images in order to gain insights about internal military culture and group dynamics.

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“Doing a Lynndie”: Iconography of a Gesture

Cited by 12 publications

References 4 publications

Digitally-assisted iconology: A method for the analysis of digital media

Digitally-assisted iconology: A method for the analysis of digital media

Necropoetic gestures

Why do soldiers swap illicit pictures? How a visual discourse analysis illuminates military band of brother culture

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