ABSTRACT
This chapter constructs the author’s model of aesthetic care as the first form of care as contestation. Aesthetic care addresses the double constitution of the witnessing act of aesthetic representation, which becomes analyzed here through overly referenced photojournalistic images. The chapter first demonstrates the seeming muteness of the subject represented, and then shows the manner in which the representation of the allegedly mute subject can break through the trope of silent victim. To show this double constitution, the author engages arguments on the images under consideration dialectically yet argues for further development and forestalls any static or permanent conclusion. The argument on aesthetic care begins to demonstrate the voice and agency of refugees and forced migrants who have been represented in the double sense of muteness—at once through an assumed silence and subsequently through manipulation of this into a perceived threat the moment the assumed silent victim becomes agential. This chapter sets the stage for the role of witnessing internal to an ethico-political understanding, as will be elaborated in chapters 3 and 4. Major figures engaged in this chapter include Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michael Kelly, Luc Boltanski, Sara Ahmed, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Rancière.
