Reframing the Frames of Human Suffering E L E A NOR H OLTZ A P P L E
In her book Regarding the Pain of Others, political philosopher Susan Sontag highlights the problems that arise from the modern ways in which society conceptualizes human suffering. This framing that we assign to the suffering of others has made people desensitized to it. Sontag asserts that this indifference is especially prevalent in war photography, because of the way it utilizes framing techniques to circulate images of suffering. She provides solutions to reframe suffering through the attachment of narratives to war imagery. In Frames of War: When Life is Grievable, political theorist Judith Butler shares Sontag’s concern about the rise of desensitization by calling for the redescribing of the social norms which provide the foundation for these frames that condition how we view suffering. Butler claims that these norms create a hierarchy of grievability, where some lives have a quality allowing them to be mourned in occurrences of suffering, while others lack this quality of grievability. Ultimately, this hierarchy gives the power to decide the value of others’ lives. Butler claims desensitization occurs because we are incapable of recognizing - or understanding the existence of - the personhood and precarity of those lives which are framed as encompassing low grievability. A precarable life is one that is recognized as being vulnerable to suffering, and only grievable lives - ones that society truly cares about and recognizes as a human life - have this quality of precariousness. Without recognizing the grievability of the lives of others, our society will not have the motivation needed to properly alleviate human suffering on a state or global scale. This paper investigates the similarity between Sontag’s and Butler’s claims, both of which assert that we labor under frames of unrecognizability. The frames create indifference towards human suffering and stifle attempts to try to alleviate this suffering. By examining the commonality of Sontag and Butler, this paper argues we can only reframe suffering through the
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