through which spatial distances between self/other, civilized/barbaric, North/South,
developed/underdeveloped are produced and maintained”.^77
A third key characteristic noted by Ignatieff is the constant use of
synecdoche, taking the part for the whole, and the focus on particular individuals to
tell the story. He concedes that synecdoche “has the virtues of making the
abstractions of exile, expulsion, starvation, and other forms of suffering into an
experience sufficiently concrete and real to make empathy possible”.^78 But he then
points out that:
The identification that synecdoche creates is intense but shallow. We feel
for a particular victim, without understanding why or how he or she has
come to be a victim; and empathy without understanding is bound to fritter
away when the next plausible victim makes his or her appearance on our
screen or when we learn something that apparently contradicts the image of
a simple innocence that the structure of synecdoche invited us to expect.^79Here we rejoin the problem explored in the previous chapter, of the innocence of
the victims in question. Though putting cruelty first, for instance, may enable
professional humanitarians to overcome the need to believe in the innocence of
victims, it is not so easy when appealing to the humanitarian impulse of others. The
issue of synecdoche also links into important debates about the ethics of
representation within professional humanitarianism. They are concerned about the
extent to which humanitarian appeals nourish the voyeuristic tendencies of some,
as evoked above. They also wonder whether images of suffering, designed to
promote the defence of common humanity and human dignity, should prioritise a
respectful portrayal of the people involved, and if so, what that might entail. The
Red Cross Code of Conduct states that: “In our information, publicity and
advertising activities, we shall recognise disaster victims as dignified humans, not
hopeless objects”.^80 Arguably, this is where different strands of the humanitarian
77
David Campbell, "Geopolitics and Visuality: Sighting the Darfur Conflict", Political
Geography 78 26, no. 4 (2007): 380.
79 Ignatieff, "The Stories We Tell", 294.
80 Ibid., 295.
IFRC, The Code of Conduct.