Powell’s point: ‘denial and deception’ at the UN

Abstract

This article examines the use of visual representation in Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations on 5 February 2003. The article borrows from Charles Goodwin’s theory of professional vision to argue that Powell’s presentation failed to develop a shared vision of the material presented. The primary flaw in this regard was Powell’s failure to acknowledge and account for the differences between modes of visual representation. Projections of text, photographs, video, maps and computer-generated illustrations were presented as synonymous forms of visual evidence. By not accounting for the unique properties of these media, Powell failed to articulate the images as evidentiary statements. What was to be a convincing display of visual evidence was instead a weak and discontinuous PowerPoint slide show. Using Powell’s presentation as a case-study, the author stresses the need to be more critically aware of one’s representational choices in acts of communication.

The Politics of Drawing: Children, Evidence, and the Darfur Conflict

“…The US Holocaust Memorial Museum's (USHMM) project, “Crisis in Darfur” (2009), using the Google Earth platform, and Amnestly International USA's “Eyes on Darfur” () made use of GIS imagery, to document the violence and destruction taking place in Darfur, and to name the situation there as “genocide.” Amnesty International, for example, used this imagery to show “irrefutably that civilians were targeted in the Negeha region of south Darfur with whole villages burned to the ground” (Koettl ). The then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, also made use of such imagery to label what was taking place in Darfur as “genocide” (Finn ). As a refugee from Darfur, quoted in the Washington Times , asserted, satellite imagery functions as a global panoptic eye: “President Bashir needs to understand he is being watched … He is not going to be changed, but he is going to know that 200 million people who didn't hear about the situation [in Darfur] before, they're going to know now” (Miller ).…”

“…(The fact that these were specifically African children's drawings also 7 This literature is relatively limited. We have located four articles which identify different forms of visuality in relation to the Darfur conflict: David Campbell (2007), Matthew Levinger (2009), Lisa Parks (2009), and Jonathan Finn (2010. 8 On the revolutionizing capacities and limits of satellite imagery, see the editors' introduction to a special section in Geoforum: Dodge and Perkins (2009). serves to enhance the framing of these drawings in this way.)…”

“… This literature is relatively limited. We have located four articles which identify different forms of visuality in relation to the Darfur conflict: David Campbell (), Matthew Levinger (), Lisa Parks (), and Jonathan Finn (). …”