Page 64 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Circulation 47

[i]nformation technologies allow us to trace the associations in a way
that was impossible before. Not because they subvert the old concrete
“humane” society, turning us into formal cyborgs or “post human” ghosts,
but for exactly the opposite reason: they make visible what was before
only present virtually.
(2005: 207)

In Latour’s thinking, circulation is strongly affected by technological
agency. The two AG images are themselves enabled by their translation into
particular technological operations. In other words, they are mediated by
various interfaces and switches, establishing digital connectivity. The process
of distribution is complemented by countless cross-references and cross-
fertilizations between new and old media; newspapers and television referring
to Web sites and vice versa (see also van Dijk 1999: 165). However, also as van
Loon points out, every medium is by its very nature “interfacial”; it performs
translations between different types of forms (2005: 11). The process of
image circulation can thus be described as a continuous multiplicity of flows
that are only partially and temporally stabilized in emergent assemblages. In
the case of the two AG images, this results in numerous opportunities for
various actors to get invited into associative contacts with them.
Second, circulation is acted out on condition, wherein relationships are
between different images as artefacts. The two AG images are photographs
taken by soldiers using their camera phones. Latour argues:

…[o]bjects occupy the beginning and the end of a similar accumulation
cycle; no matter whether they are far or near, infinitely big or small,
infinitely old or young, …[t]hey all take the shape of a flat surface of
paper that can be archived, pinned on a wall and combined with others.
(1987: 227)

In the case of the two AG images, this is especially true with photographic
reproductions that were printed in news media or were published in books
and articles on the issue (see e.g., Sontag 2004; Danner 2004). On the
Internet Google image archive, one can find several images of the same
event and cartoons commenting on “the original” images. It is in these
encounters between the images that different kinds of associations potential
for circulation are made possible. What kinds of associations are eventually
activated depends on variation, order, and context of portrayal. For example,
when the two AG images are put side by side and “read” from left to write,
one can assume that what is represented is a torture narrative of one and
the same man. There is no face shown in the first image to prove that he is
not the same man as in the other image. This means that the change in the