omitted, even in discussions about the problems of representation.^89 Thomas
Laqueur points out that historically, “[naming] is part of the story of how the
normative claim that everyone has a life to live came to command cultural
resonance.”^90 Caroline Moorehead’s Human Cargo is another example of work that
gives the refugees whose lives it draws on their due.^91
Indeed, in the eighteenth century, sustained engagement in novels with
particular characters was important in enabling a human rights culture to develop,
according to Lynn Hunt: “Human rights could only flourish when people learned to
think of others as their equals, as like them in some fundamental fashion. They
learned this equality, at least in part, by experiencing identification with ordinary
characters who seemed dramatically present and familiar, even if ultimately
fictional.”^92
This does not overcome the recurring problem of how to convey richer
accounts in a fragmented and complex media environment, though Denis Kennedy
places some hope in the internet’s ability to support more creative ways of doing
this.^93 At least, it promises the possibility of voices being heard through means
other than the kind of journalism wryly referred to in the title of Edward Behr’s
memoir Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English?^94
89
Denis Kennedy, "Selling the Distant Other: Humanitarianism and Imagery - Ethical
Dilemmas of Humanitarian Action", Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (28 February 2009).
Available at http://jha.ac/2009/02/28/selling-the-distant-other-humanitarianism-and-
imagery%E2%80%94ethical-dilemmas-of-humanitarian-action/; accessed on 21 June 2010. I
recall being uneasy at the absence of names in an exhibition of portraits of refugees by
Sebastiao Salgado, perhaps the most successful current “humanitarian” photojournalist, at
the Barbican a few years ago, and was interested to discover that this was his standard
practice, according to Susan Sontag. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others , 70. Stan Cohen
also expresses distaste for what he sees as Salgado’s “wholly aesthetic response to
suffering”. Cohen, States of Denial , 299. For a thoughtful defence, and interesting
meditation on the role of aesthetic responses to suffering, see David Campbell, "Salgado
and the Sahel: Documentary Photography and the Imaging of Famine", in Rituals of
Mediation: International Politics and Social Meaning , ed. François Debrix and Cynthia
Weber (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003). On Salgado and the
representation of refugees, see Nyers, 90 Rethinking Refugees , 18-22.
91 Laqueur, "Mourning, Pity, and the Work of Narrative in the Making Of "Humanity"", 53.
92 Moorehead, Human Cargo.
93 Hunt, Inventing Human Rights , 58.
94 Kennedy, "Selling the Distant Other".
Edward Behr, Anyone Here Been Raped and Speaks English? (London: Penguin, 1992).