Voicing, Looking, Perspective (Constantine V. Nakassis)

Framed by Fanon's discussion of post-colonial language and his phenomenology of perception, the talk thinks through the parallels of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of voice and Edward Branigan's discussion of looking/camera alongside developments in linguistic anthropological accounts of enregisterment and concepts in visual studies concerning "ways of seeing" (Berger). The aim is to develop a semiotics of perspective (and a linguistic anthropology of images). The basis for this exploration is an analysis of racialization in the Van Dyke trial for the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald. As I show, the defense's use of animated videos encouraged the jury to see the murder not through the documentary there-ness of the dashcam video of the murder but, rather, from the fearful subjectivity and affect of Van Dyke himself; this became the basis for the prosecution's "contested vision" (Goodwin) and alternative entextualization of perspective