This introduction explores some of the broader themes in this special section on the technologies of witnessing. In today's globally mediated world, visual images play a central role in determining which violences are redeemed and which get recognized. Northern human rights activists understand this fact and in recent years have built a transnational communications infrastructure through which “local” actors' claims are formatted into human rights “issues.” I discuss the axiom that underpins this infrastructure, the notion that “seeing is believing,” and then go on to briefly analyze some of the models (mobilization of shame) and forms (testimony) through which activists mediate their claims.

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This special feature presents curated excerpts from two virtual conversations that the editors (Liana Chua and Omri Grinberg) held with anthropologist and author Asale Angel-Ajani, historian Carolyn J. Dean and anthropologist and filmmaker Meg McLagan on the theme of witnessing. Beginning with the participants’ reflexive discussions of how they came to work on witnessing, the conversations delve into several intertwined questions and debates. These include the politics and impacts of witnessing; the performativity of witnessing and the subjectivities involved; the evolving place and practice of witnessing in the contemporary post-truth, digitally saturated milieu; the ‘dark side’ and other problematics of witnessing; how different disciplines witness and represent witnessing; and the question of what scholars can do to witness or bear witness in the present.

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