Portraits of Absence: Listening to the Kidnapped Posters

Images are sites and key media of struggle. This essay shows how such conflicts play out—both via form and through use—and why that matters for the study of politics. Analyzing the visual politics of #KidnappedFromIsrael provides a critical yet undertheorized perspective on the hostilities that erupted in American cities over Israel/Palestine after October 7. Through this case study I endeavor to make four contributions: 1. define a visual genre, "portraits of absence," which publicizes suffering in distinct ways; 2. extend critical phenomenologists' conceptualization of "perceptual habits" to the not-Other; 3. explicate and trouble binaries undergirding empathic visual practices; 4. reassess the relationship between virtual and physical sites of political contestation.