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Representational practices affect moral perception and moral recognition, and so are proper studies for moral philosophy. Using Wittgenstein's idea that a human body pictures a soul, this chapter examines three patterns of representation of human bodies that impair or bias moral perception and proper recognition of human beings. Stereo-graphy fuses representation of the bodies of one kind of human being to a particular kind of comportment. Porno-graphy repetitively pictures certain bodies in sexualized ways. Necro-graphy produces representations of bodies that picture living human beings as already dead or beyond hope, or inscribe dead human bodies with an insult to their humanity. Moral graphics — the study of morally significant patterns of representation — aids in understanding the construction of identities, the nature and impact of stereotypes, and the fact that some kinds of prejudice are not easily accessible by conscious reflection.

This chapter explores some of the implications that the current U.S. “war on terror” has for both feminism and human rights. In particular, it examines the representational practices of the U.S. state. A critical dimension of contemporary U.S. state power lies in its attempt to engage in a series of boundary projects, delineating what counts as “civil society,” “civilian space,” and “terror.” Understanding such representational practices as a dimension of state intervention is particularly critical given how dominant media images in the United States have increasingly been interwoven into state and nationalist agendas. U.S. state practices have effectively appropriated the language of human rights in the current “war on terror,” limiting the universality of a human rights framework through the specificity of particular state interests. In this context, feminist strategies that draw on a human rights framework are compelled to address how universal languages of human rights are bounded through the territorialized interests of the nation-state.

This chapter further examines the Sports Illustrated case, focusing mainly on two things. The first argument deals mainly with the touristic travel context of the swimsuit issue. This context alone reflects racial conceptions that posit Africans as inferior to Westerners. This notion is seen in representational practices that perpetuate colonial relations. In a way, the photo shoot created a sense of colonialism because it placed contemporary American identity in relation to the rest of the world. At the same time, the meaning for the Ndebele audience and participants was different. For them, the photographs speak to autonomy, cultural pride, and economic power, more so because they relate to the postapartheid moment in which the shoot took place. This meaning for the Ndebele audience, then, is what constitutes the second discussion of this chapter. The chapter explores these contrasting meanings as well as the intersections of various localities in these representations.

International criminal justice relies on messages, speech acts, and performatives practices, in order to convey social meaning. This introductory chapter sets this phenomenon into perspective. It argues that expression and communication are not only an inherent part of the punitive functions of international criminal justice, but represented in a whole spectrum of practices: norm expression and diffusion, institutional actions, performative aspects of criminal procedures, and repair of harm. This account provides a novel lens to explain many of the complexities, weaknesses, and hidden contradictions of international justice. It highlights at the same time risks and tensions, such as the self-referential nature of meaning production, the use of binaries or stereotypes in legal discourse, the displacement of alternative truths or frames of reference or the creation of new social hierarchies. The social responsibilities and communicative structures that come with the expressive turn need to be re-visited.