¹ Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times,” in Social Suffering, ed. Kleinman, Arthur, Das, Veena and Lock, Margaret (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 1Google Scholar; Sontag's, SusanRegarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003).Google Scholar

² Chopp, Rebecca, The Praxis of Suffering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Political Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), 2.Google Scholar

³ One example of this commodification is the Benetton Company's use of images of suffering to market clothing. See Nash, Nathaniel, “Benetton Touches a Nerve and Germans Protest,” The New York Times, February 3, 1995, D1, D18.Google Scholar

⁴ There are many examples of photos of suffering which have transitioned from documentation to artwork and to “emblems of suffering.” One example is Robert Capa's falling soldier; see Sontag, , Regarding the Pain of Others, 119–26.Google Scholar See also Spelman, Elizabeth, “On the Aesthetic Usability of Suffering” in Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997), 133–56Google Scholar; Goldberg, Vicki, “Looking at the Poor in a Gilded Frame,” New York Times, April 9, 1995, sec. 2: 1, 39.Google Scholar

⁵ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 1.Google Scholar

⁶ I am indebted to Susan Ross for her thought-provoking work on the theological value of ambiguity. She writes: “When a situation is marked by ambiguity, its resolution is unclear: there is more than one possible solution, more than one meaning. It is often marked by tension, as competing resolutions are suggested by those involved. In between order and chaos, ambiguity demands further reflection, consideration of new and different outcomes, decisions on what issues are at stake in it resolution…. But such a situation means that those involved must be able to tolerate, at least for a time, a certain ‘lack’ of order. This ‘disorder’ allows for dimensions of the situation to reveal themselves, or to be uncovered by questioning, opening up issues and concerns that could affect the situations resolution” (Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology [New York: Continuum, 1998], 69).

⁷ See Rose, Gillian, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London: Sage Publications, 2001), 167Google Scholar: “The institutional uses of photography makes us think photographs are truthful pictures, not photographic techniques themselves…. Foucault's emphasis on institutions and power/knowledge is crucial for understanding the belief that photography pictures the real.”

⁸ This limited space does not allow for a full catalog of this valuable work. However, such a list would include Rose, , Visual Methodologies; Evan, Jessica and Hall, Stuart, eds. Visual Culture: The Reader (London: Sage Publications, 1999)Google Scholar; Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London; Sage Publications, 1997)Google Scholar; Heywood, Ian and Sandywell, Barry, eds. Interpreting Visual Culture: Explorations in the Hermeneutics of the Visual (New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; Plate, S. Brent ed., Religion, Art and Visual Culture: A Cross Cultural Reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002)Google Scholar; Taylor, John, Body Horror: Photo Journalism, Catastrophe and War (New York: New York University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Zelizer, Barbie, Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Gross, Larry, Katz, John Stuart and Ruby, Jay eds., Image Ethics in the Digital Age (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).Google Scholar

⁹ Dikovitskaya, Margaret, Visual Culture: The Study of the Visual after the Cultural Turn, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 1.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Gattegno, Caleb, Towards a Visual Culture: Educating through Television (New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1969).Google Scholar

¹¹ “To talk of the medium of television is a way to talk of man (sic) as the perceiver, the responder, the expander, the processor of images” (Gattengo, , Towards a Visual Culture, 15).Google Scholar For an extended work on human beings as processors of images see Gregory, Richard, Eye and Brain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

¹² For a and excellent and thorough exploration of gaze as complex sense and brain process in producing mental image see Barry, Ann Marie Sward, Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 15–68.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., 15 (“map”), 67 (“visual intelligence”).

¹⁴ Ibid., 66.

¹⁵ Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 88.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Szorenyi, Anna, “Distanced Suffering: Photographed Suffering and the Construction of White In/vulnerability,” Social Semiotics 19 (2009): 93–109, at 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Since the terms “spectator” and “spectacle” signal a discussion that is beyond the scope of this article, I will limit my use of the terms. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright define spectacle as “a term that generally refers to something that is striking or impressive in its visual display.” These scholars point out that a spectacle will “dominate contemporary culture and all social relations are mediated by and through these images” (Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 366 [my emphasis]). The term “spectacle” was employed in a specific way in 1967 in Debord's, Guy seminal work, Society of the Spectacle (trans. Nickolson-Smith, Donald [New York: Zone Books, 1994]).Google Scholar Stuart Hall's work brilliantly uses this concept to interrogate the dynamics of racist cultural representation; see Hall, Stuart, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” in Representation, 223–90.Google Scholar To understand the dynamic of spectacle in relationship to current visual cultural studies, see Mitchell, W.J.T., What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).Google Scholar For a fascinating introduction to this issue, see Gross, Larry, “Privacy and Spectacle: The Reversible Panopticon and Media Saturated Society,” Image Ethics in the Digital Age, 95–113.Google Scholar “Spectacle” and “spectator” refer to social roles and processes of power. My use of these terms is limited in this essay to denote the powerful social role the viewer has in gazing upon an image of suffering and not having to act in relationship to this anguish. See also Chouliaraki, Lillie, The Spectatorship of Suffering (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Gaze, is defined as “to look steadily, intently, and with fixed intention.” The American Heritage College Dictionary (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 565.Google Scholar Within visual cultural studies, the term “gaze” is multifaceted and embedded in a rich and interdisciplinary body of literature including film theory, feminist theory, literary criticism and psychoanalytic thought. For the purposes of this essay I use the term to connote the power relationship of the one who looks. I draw upon Michel Foucault's idea that the gaze is not only something a person does, but is a relationship of power into which one enters through the mechanism of vision in society as a whole; see Foucault, Michel, “The Eye of Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. Gordon, Colin (New York: Pantheon, 1980)Google Scholar; idem, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Vintage, 1979).Google Scholar For a clear overview of the ideas of gaze and power in visual cultural studies, see Sturken, Marita and Cartwright, Lisa, “Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge” in Practices of Looking, 72–108.Google Scholar

¹⁹ hooks, bell, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 115.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ For more on the development of the practice of photojournalism as advocacy see Stomberg, John, “A Genealogy of Orthodox Documentary,” in Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, ed. Reinhardt, Mark, Edwards, Holly, and Dugganne, Erina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37–56.Google Scholar

²² See further Scott, William, Documentary Expression in Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Agee, James and Evans, Walker, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941)Google Scholar; Bourke-White, Margaret, You Have Seen Their Faces (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1937).Google Scholar

²³ For historical background on this photograph, see Hariman, Robert and Lucaites, John Luis, No Caption Required: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 49–67.Google Scholar

²⁴ “What Does the ‘New Deal’ Mean to This Mother and Her Child, San Francisco News, March 11, 1936, 3.

²⁵ Hariman, Robert and Lucaites, John Luis, No Caption Required, 56.Google Scholar

²⁶ Cohen, Stanley, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 168.Google Scholar One could argue that this is no longer true for Americans since 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina. However, I believe that Cohen's thesis is still relevant because he demonstrates that the knowledge we have of mass suffering is mediated by layers of institutions, even within our own country. This was and is true of how the images of 9/11 mediated knowledge of suffering to people in the United States. See Sherman, Daniel and Nardin, Terry eds. Terror, Culture, Politics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 2001)Google Scholar; Davies, Merryl Wyn, “September 11: The Visual Disaster,” Third Text 15, no. 57 (Winter 2001–2002): 13–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ Cohen, , States of Denial, 168.Google Scholar

²⁸ Rosler, Martha, “In, Around and Afterthoughts (On Documentary Photography),” in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography ed. Bolton, Richard (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 321.Google Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., 23.

³⁰ Botalski, Luc, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics trans. Burchill, Graham, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 3.Google Scholar

³¹ I want to thank Margie Pfeil for this insight; see her article, “The Transformative Power of the Periphery: Can a White U.S. Catholic Opt for the Poor?” in Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence, eds. Cassidy, Laurie and Mikulich, Alex (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 113.Google Scholar

³² Copeland, M. Shawn, “Foundations for Catholic Theology in an African American Context,” in Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk: Contributions of African American Experience and World View to Catholic Theology, ed. Phelps, Jamie T., Marquette Studies in Theology 5 (Milwaukee: WI: Marquette University Press, 1997), 112.Google ScholarCopeland, makes this same point in “The Exercise of Black Catholic Theology in the United States,” Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology 3 (1996), 11.Google Scholar See also Griffin, Susan, “Pornography and Silence,” Made From This Earth: An Anthology of Writings by Susan Griffin (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 110–60Google Scholar; Rivers, Clarence Rufus J., “The Oral African American Tradition Versus the Ocular Western Tradition: The Spirit of Worship,” in Taking Down Our Harps, Black Catholics in the United States, ed. Hayes, Diana and Davis, Cyprian (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 239.Google Scholar

³³ Goldberg, David Theo, Racial Subjects: Writing on Race in America (New York: Routlege, 1997), 80.Google Scholar For a profound treatment of how this dynamic of being “known” and invisible impacts the understanding of domestic violence against Black women see West, Traci, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence and Resistance Ethics (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 57–59.Google Scholar

³⁴ Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, (London: Verso, 2004), 20.Google Scholar

³⁵ Szorenyi, , “Distanced Suffering,” 95.Google Scholar

³⁶ Sontag, Susan, “Preface,” Don McCullin (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), 16.Google Scholar

³⁷ Dikovitskaya, , Visual Culture, 1.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Ibid., 16.

⁴⁰ Iris Marion Young identifies five specific forms of oppression which I believe are at work in visual representation; exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).

⁴¹ Hall, Stuart, “The Spectacle of ‘The Other’” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices ed. Hall, Stuart (London: Sage Publications), 226.Google Scholar

⁴² See http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/Enlargement.aspx?id=0000295711–001&tab=details&caller=search. It is problematic that as a white North American social ethicist I will focus on a photograph from Africa to argue that representation inscribes racist power relations. Barbara Andolsen and Shawn Copeland have pointed out that North American Christian social ethicists and theologians often use examples in Africa rather than the United States to obfuscate their own involvement in white privilege. I join with this critique and intend my analysis to show how this representation is an expression of this obfuscation. This photo serves as a “spectacle of the other” which reveals the global implications of North American white privilege. See Frederickson, George, The Black Image in the White Mind (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987)Google Scholar as well as bell hooks, Black Looks.

⁴³ Lorch, Donatella, “Sudan Is Described as Trying to Placate the West,” The New York Times (March 26, 1993), http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2D7123FF935A15750C0A965958260&sec=&spon=&&scp=2&sq=donatella%20lorch%20sudan&st=cseGoogle Scholar (accessed October 24, 2010).

⁴⁴ Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others, 47.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Ibid., 26.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 26–27.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 26.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 26.

⁴⁹ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Carter and three other white South Africans (Joao Sliva, Greg Marinovich and Ken Oosterboek) were on a mission to use photojournalism to expose the brutality of apartheid. The four men became so well known in the townships for capturing the violence of apartheid they became known as the “Bang-Bang Club.”

⁵² MacLeod, Scott, “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” Time 144:11, September 12, 1994, 70–73.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Keller, Bill, “Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Winner For Sudan Photo, is Dead at 33,” The New York Times, July 29, 1994, B8.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ In April 13, 1994 The New York Times ran a full-page advertisement in recognition of the three Pulitzer Prizes that it won in that year. In describing Carter's photo it read: “To The New York Times for Kevin Carter's photograph of a vulture perching near a little girl in the Sudan who had collapsed from hunger, a picture that became an icon of starvation” (cited in Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 5.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ MacLeod, , “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” 73.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Harwood, Richard, “Moral Motives,” The Washington Post, November 21, 1994, A25.Google Scholar Using Carter as an example, Harwood explores the positive contribution of photo-journalists while also giving a nuanced picture of their ethical dilemmas.

⁵⁹ MacLeod, , “The Life and Death of Kevin Carter,” 73.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal to Experience,” 7.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ W.J.T. Mitchell as cited in Dikovitskaya, , Visual Culture, 16.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Shapiro, Michael, The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography, Photography, and Policy Analysis (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), xii.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of Images,” 18.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Sontag, , Regarding the Pain of Others, 102–03.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Lorch, “Sudan Is Described as Trying to Placate the West.”

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Dreze, Jean and Sen, Amartya, Hunger and Public Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dreze and Sen demonstrate the political causes of famine in sub-Saharan Africa.

⁷⁰ Kleinman, and Kleinman, , “The Appeal of Experience,” 4.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., 7.

⁷² Ibid. See also Slatoff, Walter, The Look of Distance: Reflections on Suffering and Sympathy in Modern Literature—Auden to Agee, Whitman to Woolf (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

⁷³ Morris, David, “Voice, Genre, and Moral Community,” Social Suffering eds. Kleinman, Arthur, Das, Veena and Lock, Margaret (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 38.Google Scholar An example of this thinking is in C.S. Lewis' idea that at any one moment in the universe there is never more pain than one person experiences. The Problem of Pain (New York: Macmillan, 1994), 103–04.

⁷⁴ Morris, David, “Voice, Genre, and Moral Community,” 38.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Desjarlais, Robert et al. , World Mental Health: Problems and Priorities in Low-Income Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar This volume demonstrates how the World Bank and International Monetary Fund impact post-Cold War global conditions which adversely effect health care and social policies in sub-Saharan Africa, especially for women.

⁷⁶ Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience,” 8.Google Scholar For another such example see the photo by Ruth Fremson of an unnamed Haitian woman, with the caption, “A woman in Fort Dimanche laying out biscuits to dry, biscuits made of butter, salt, water and dirt.” (emphasis my own) The New York Times (May 5, 2004), 1. I want to thank Anna Perkins, Ph.D. who commented that the perspective of the photo and caption's message implies that Caribbean peoples may be thought by Americans as destined to eat dirt.

⁷⁷ Kleinman, Arthur and Kleinman, Joan, “The Appeal of Experience,” 7.Google Scholar Emphasis in the text.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ This term “racial knowledge” is from Goldberg, David, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), 148–84.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ One example is the photograph of a frightened Rwandan child entitled, “Helpless” on the cover of The Economist July 23, 1994. For more on this see Hall, Stuart, “The Spectacle of the Other,” 225–77.Google Scholar

⁸¹ “Those thus rendered Other are sacrificed to the idealization, excluded from the being of personhood, from social benefits, and from political (self-)representation.” Goldberg, David, Racist Culture, 151.Google Scholar

⁸² See Susan Ross's definition of ambiguity no. 8.

⁸³ Seelaus, Vilma O.C. D., Distraction in Prayer: Blessing or Curse? St. Teresa of Avila's Teachings in the Interior Castle (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 2005), 52.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ For a sample of the classic critique of this problem see Brown, Joann Carlson and Parker, Rebecca, “For God so Loved the World?” Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse, ed. Brown, Joanne Carlson and Bohn, Carol (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Brock, Rita Nakishima, Journeys by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: Crossroad, 1988)Google Scholar; Cone, James, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979)Google Scholar; Jones, William, Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology (Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1973).Google Scholar

⁸⁵ See further Cone, James, “An African American on the Cross and Suffering,” in The Scandal of a Crucified World: Perspectives on the Cross and Suffering, ed. Tesfai, Yacob (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994) 48–60Google Scholar; Kienzle, Beverly Mayne and Nienhuis, Nancy, “Battered Women and the Construction of Sanctity,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17 (2001): 33–61Google Scholar; Vento, Johann, “Violence, Trauma, and Resistance: A Feminist Appraisal of Metz's Mysticism of Suffering unto God,” Horizons 29 (2002): 7–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sobrino, Jon, Jesus the Liberator (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 209–11.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ See Collins, Patricia Hill, Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 201–28Google Scholar, where the author explains intersectionality of race, class and gender in regard to the creation of knowledge and the ory development.

⁸⁷ Lucien Richard explains that a root metaphor functions by disclosing the connection of different elements of an identity by its relatedness to reality as a whole, and specifically to Ultimate Reality. As a root metaphor the doctrine of imago Dei reveals the connection of God as Creator, the dignity and value of the human person, and the communitarian nature of the human vocation. See Richard, Lucien, “Toward a Renewed Theology of Creation: Implications for the Questions of Human Rights,” Eglise at Theologie 19 (1986): 149.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ For more on this point see Tracy, David, “Religion and Human Rights in the Public Realm,” Daedalus (Fall 1983): 248.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Moltmann, Jurgen, God in Creation, trans. Kohl, Margaret (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 216.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Hilkert, Mary Catherine, “Cry Beloved Image: Rethinking the Image of God,” in In the Embrace of God, ed. Graff, Ann O'Hara (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 200.Google Scholar See also LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991), 243–317Google Scholar; Kasper, Walter, The God of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1984).Google Scholar

⁹¹ Johnson, Elizabeth A., She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 222–23.Google Scholar

⁹² See Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes), http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html (accessed 24 October 2010), §§3, 12. For an overview of this basis of Catholic social teaching, see Curran, Charles E., Catholic Social Teaching: 1891–Present: A Historical, Theological, and Ethical Analysis (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 136.Google Scholar

⁹³ Hilkert, , “Cry Beloved Image,” 192.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ See Cahill, Lisa Sowle, “Toward a Christian Theory of Human Rights,” The Journal of Christian Ethics 8 (1980): 279.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Hilkert, , “Cry Beloved Image,” 195.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Ibid., 203.

⁹⁷ See United States Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (1986), http://www.usccb.org/jphd/economiclife/pdf/economic_justice_for_all.pdf (accessed 24 October 2010), §28.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ I want to thank the anonymous reviewer who suggested I explore concepts of image and icon in this article. I have not done justice to this reviewer's insight, but hope to expand upon this in future work.

⁹⁹ Copeland, M. Shawn, “Knit Together by the Spirit as Church” in Prophetic Witness: Catholic Women's Strategies for Reform, ed. Griffith, Colleen M. (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 20.Google Scholar Here she quotes Sacks, Johnathan, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (New York: Continuum, 2003), 65.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Townes, Emilie, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave/McMillan, 2006), 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the history and cultural (dis)function of this image, see Kern-Foxworth, Marilyn, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994)Google Scholar; Turner, Patricia, Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture (New York: Anchor Books, 1994).Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Townes, , Womanist Ethics, 143.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Ibid., 144.

¹⁰³ See further the United States Catholic Bishops, Brothers and Sisters to Us: U.S. Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Racism in Our Day (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1979), 3:Google Scholar “Racism is a sin: a sin that divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, violates the fundamental dignity of those called to be children of the same Father.”

¹⁰⁴ Kleinman and Kleinman, “The Appeal of Experience,” 1. For more on this notion of “Charitainment,” see Poniewozik, James, “The Year of Chaitainment,” Time Magazine, December 26, 2005, 93.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Szorenyi, , “Distanced suffering,” 99.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Wiesel, Elie, Night, trans. Rodway, Stell (New York: Bantam Books, 1960), 3.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 2.

¹⁰⁸ Ashley, James Matthew, Interruptions: Mysticism, Politics, and Theology in the Work of Johann Baptist Metz (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 128.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ This term of “Unpacking the invisible knapsack” was coined by McIntosh, Peggy in her now classic article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peace and Freedom (July/August 1989):11–12.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ For more on this idea of the unconscious, but very active images that condition perception and judgment see Vedantam, Shankar, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010).Google Scholar

¹¹¹ This notion of questioning as a stance is rooted in the work of Metz, J.B.. See A Passion for God: The Mystical Political Dimension of Christianity ed. Ashley, Matthew (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 62.Google Scholar

¹¹² Metz's original terminology in German is Leiden an Gott. Matthew Ashley, Metz's translator, explains that the German construction would normally be translated as “to suffer from …” as to “suffer from a fever.” Ashley explains, “I have chosen admittedly a more peculiar translation of ‘suffering unto God’ to capture the dynamic character of this relationship” (Interruptions, 218 n. 31).

¹¹³ Metz, Johann Baptist, A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, trans. Ashley, J. Matthew (New York: Paulist, 1998), 66.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Ashley, , Interruptions, 128.Google Scholar See Metz, J.B., The Emergent Church: The Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeois World, trans. Mann, Peter (New York: Seabury, 1981), 1–6.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ O'Connor, Kathleen M., Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 128.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ This question is compiled from a series of questions suggested by Sontag, , Regarding the Pain of Others, 116–17.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Ibid., 99.

¹¹⁸ Ibid.

¹¹⁹ Ashley, , Interruptions, 130.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ Sobrino, Jon, “Awaking from the Sleep of Inhumanity,” The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified People Down from the Cross, trans. Planas, Dimas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 1–14.Google Scholar