Burning Images: A History of Effigy Protests

A visual anthropology of the destruction of images―its aesthetics, its rhetoric and its mediation in global news

A theatrical form of political protest, effigy hanging and burning has become increasingly visible in the news media, particularly in protests against US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, in American domestic politics and in the Arab Spring. Taking these events as points of departure, author Florian Göttke investigates the conditions of this visual protest genre, its roots and genealogies in various countries.

Effigy protests communicate communal outrage over experienced injustice. Hanging and burning effigies is an archaic and ritualistic form of protest, yet is effectively communicated by global news media and social media, mediated and used transnationally. Illustrated with examples from the United States, the Middle East, Iraq, Egypt, Iran and Afghanistan, the book contains two interacting narratives: text (seven chapters) and a parallel assemblage of images. It delves deeply into the different practices, iconologies, rituals, protest and media strategies, and addresses effigy protests as a symptom of fundamental conflicts at the limits of contemporary liberal democracy.