Miss Miriam Deprez1
1Griffith University, Nathan, Australia
Biography:
Miriam is a Meanjin/Brisbane-based photographer, journalist, and researcher. Miriam holds a bachelor's degree in photography and journalism and is currently undertaking her PhD at Griffith University, where she is researching the visual politics of occupation and resistance. At Griffith, she also teaches security studies, human rights journalism, and analogue photography. Miriam has worked as a freelance journalist and photographer throughout Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, rural Australia, and the Middle East, with a particular concentration on Palestine.
Abstract:
Whilst much has been surmised about the Israeli-imposed “visual occupation” of Palestinian people and lands, little attention has been paid to the eye itself as a material site in/on which the politics of occupation is prosecuted. This paper explores the concept of ‘ocular insecurity’, referring to the systematic stripping away of political autonomy and the fundamental right to see, achieved through the physical denial and debilitation of sight. This phenomenon will be analysed through case studies from Iran, Kashmir, Chile, Egypt, Colombia, with a particular focus on the military occupation of Palestine, specifically addressing Gaza and the pervasive militarisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Key themes such as policing the senses, necro politics, visual politics, slow violence, witnessing, and the right to look will be explored and conceptualised. The discussion extends beyond acts of blinding with kinetic projectiles to include assaults on medical infrastructure, the denial of medical care and permits, as well as practices such as blindfolding and hooding. In a visual world governed by an ocular centric paradigm, the implications of having one’s sight stripped away as a means to suppress dissent, control a population, and enforce power hierarchies are profound. Ultimately, this paper will demonstrate that targeting sight is not merely a byproduct of authoritarian governance but a deliberate strategy of control. It offers novel provocations around the visual politics of occupation in Palestine, and how ways of seeing must be addressed on an embodied level – in this case, occupation of the eye, and sight itself.