Who counts as a witness determines whether slow violence registers as violence

Evidence

To address violence discounted by dominant structures of apprehension is necessarily to engage the culturally variable issue of who counts as a witness . Contests over what counts as violence are intimately entangled with conflicts over who bears the social authority of witness, which entails much more than simply seeing or not seeing. The entangled politics of spectacle and witnessing have implications that stretch well beyond environmental slow violence. In domestic abuse, for instance, violence may be life threatening but slow, bloodless, and brutal in ways that are not always immediately fatal: a broken nose constitutes a different order of evidence from food or access to medical treatment or human company withheld over an extended period. A locked door can be a weapon. Doors for women are often long-term, nonlethal weapons that leave no telltale bloody trail; doors don’t bear witness to a single, decisive blow. In many cultures, moreover, rape isn’t defined as rape if it is inflicted by a husband. And in some societies, a rape isn’t rape unless three adult men are present to witness it. As the journalistic chestnut has it, “if it bleeds, it leads.” And as a corollary, if it’s bloodless, slow-motion violence, the story is more likely to be buried, particularly if it’s relayed by people whose witnessing authority is culturally discounted. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 49

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The locked-door-as-weapon point on invisible, bloodless harm parallels the slow-noise-as-harm argument of the Soundscape connection, and ‘if it bleeds it leads’ bears on the moral-panic premises elsewhere.
• XREF: connects to: Slow violence is marginalized by converging forces of inattention — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 850; Recognizing slow violence demands images matching its delayed temporality — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 21; Eyewitness immediacy can falsely certify a disaster’s end while slow violence continues — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 614 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Slow violence is marginalized by converging forces of inattention #expands (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 850
• Eyewitness immediacy can falsely certify a disaster’s end while slow violence continues #exemplifies (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 614
• Bearing witness from temporal distance is a distinct civic mode of testimony #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1858
• Acts of witness count as process, not success or failure at a fixed point #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 644
• Recognizing slow violence demands images matching its delayed temporality #complicates (0.75) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 21