Politics of photographs: construction and consolidation of identities during Assam movement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Images could be understood as a medium that does not only reflect and represent the socio-political dynamics but diffuses and perpetuates ideas and perceptions. Images, as an integral part of media, play a huge role in this dissemination through their framing, contents, signs, and symbols. In order to comprehend this power of photographs, the paper will look into the frames, as expounded by Judith Butler, which determine the visibility and invisibility of subjects in a photograph. This paper deals with the Assam Movement, which happened in Assam, a northeastern state of India, as a reaction to the migration from neighboring Bangladesh. The paper will also delve into how the newspapers, as a production of the class structure, impress upon the symbolic environment in which peoples’ subjectivities are formulated. It is a study of how photographs published in newspapers can lay the foundations for the construction of an identity.