Can Visual Culture Studies Contribute to Human Dignity? Protestant Missions and Image Conflict in Meiji Japan: Icon-Aversion and Image Negotiation
Can Visual Culture Studies Contribute to Human Dignity? Protestant Missions and Image Conflict in Meiji Japan: Icon-Aversion and Image Negotiation
Speaker
Dr. Tomoe I.M. Steineck, University of Zurich
Date and Time
February 18. 2026, 5 pm - 6:30 pm GMT
Venue
SOAS, University of London, Russell Square: College Buildings, SOAS, Djam Lecture Theatre (DLT), for online participation: please sign up here
Abstract
This lecture asks what it means for visual culture studies—often positioned at some remove from moral philosophy or political theory—to speak responsibly about a heavyweight concept such as human dignity. Rather than treating dignity as an abstract norm defined from first principles, I approach it as something produced, contested, withheld, or damaged through visual practices: the making, withholding, circulation, reproduction, and appropriation of images. I argue that attending to image conflict—and, crucially, to the negotiation of image ownership—is not ancillary to dignity but one of its most revealing historical terrains, and one still painfully under-articulated in global discussions today.
SOAS Lecture