Title: Beyond Speech: Pictures and Oppression

Abstract: Philosophical work on oppressive forms of expression strongly tends to give verbal and written linguistic expression pride of place. When it comes to pictures, there is a tendency to either treat them as if they were language – one sees this in feminist work on pornography – or worse, to ignore pictures altogether when the topic at hand least typically pictorial or typically has a significant pictorial dimension – one sees this in Jason Stanley’s work on propaganda.

Against this linguisticism, I argue that central and influential forms of oppressive “speech” are in fact pictorial and that to understand how they do their oppressive work, we must approach pictures as pictures rather than as forms of spoken or written language. In this paper, I first examine one glaring case of linguisticism, then say something about what I think is going on here, and finally briefly examine examples of oppressive pictures and give the outlines of an explanation of how they do their oppressive work.

Please note that I will be discussing pictures that glorify and eroticize rape, and pictures that mock, shame, and demean Black persons. I will also mention pictures of lynchings. I will also briefly show some of these pictures, though not the lynching pictures. I will not leave any pictures up for long because they are triggering or otherwise injurious for many of us. That, after all, is part of the point of this paper. I will give warning before I show or mention these pictures.