Department of Anthropology Associate Professor and Director of Peace and Justice Studies Dr. Elizabeth Drexler published an article in Visual Anthropology Review. The article is titled, Seeing Gaslighting: Photo-Dialogues and Structural Injustice. Focusing on gaslighting, the article reveals a process that manipulates perception to obscure systemic inequality and injustice and produce complacency and/or inability to perceive complicity in an unjust system through photo-dialogs that engage the sensory and affective rather than evidentiary aspect of images of injustice. 

This article is based on a project supported by the Provost Undergraduate Research Initiative Award (2019-20 and 2020-21) that generously funded Isabel Hersey’s research assistance. 

Read the full article at: https://doi.org/10.1111/var.12286

Abstract: Extending photovoice methodology, I describe a process of seeing structural injustice through photo-dialogues.   In a collective context where state and society collude in normalizing and extending injustice through both law and systemic gaslighting, the problem of exposing injustice with images involves issues of common sense, language, institutions, and access to various forms of power. “Seeing gaslighting” reveals a process that manipulates perception to obscure systemic inequality and injustice and produce complacency and/or inability to perceive complicity in an unjust system. Photo-dialogues engage the sensory and affective rather than evidentiary aspect of images of injustice.