“Beyond Speech: Pictures and Oppression” – A.W. Eaton (University of Illinois, Chicago)
April 17 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Friday, April 17, 2026
4:00 – 6:00 PM
Location TBD
RSVP HERE
Join us on Friday, April 17, 2026 for a colloquium with A.W. Eaton, University of Illinois, Chicago. The talk will take place from 4:00 – 6:00 PM with a reception to follow.
Beyond Speech: Pictures and Oppression
Philosophical work on oppressive forms of expression strongly tends to give verbal and written linguistic expression pride of place. When it comes to pictures, there is a tendency to either treat them as if they were language – one sees this in feminist work on pornography – or worse, to ignore pictures altogether when the topic at hand least typically pictorial or typically has a significant pictorial dimension – one sees this in Jason Stanley’s work on propaganda. Against this linguisticism, I argue that central and influential forms of oppressive “speech” are in fact pictorial and that to understand how they do their oppressive work, we must approach pictures as pictures rather than as forms of spoken or written language. In this paper, I first examine one glaring case of linguisticism, then say something about what I think is going on here, and finally briefly examine examples of oppressive pictures and give the outlines of an explanation of how they do their oppressive work.
Please note that I will be discussing pictures that glorify and eroticize rape, and pictures that mock, shame, and demean Black persons. I will also mention pictures of lynchings. I will briefly show some of these pictures, though not the lynching pictures. I will not leave any pictures up for long because they are triggering or otherwise injurious for many of us. That, after all, is part of the point of this paper. I will do my best to give warning before I show or mention these pictures.
A.W. Eaton is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean at University of Illinois Chicago (sometimes known as “Chicago Circle”). She received her PhD in both philosophy and art history from The University of Chicago. She has published on topics such as the relationship between aesthetic and ethical value, pornography, erotic art, fatness, feminist aesthetics, aesthetics and race, and artistic representations of rape. She is currently developing a pragmatic account of pictures and working on various topics related to aesthetic injustice. Eaton has been a Laurence Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton’s Center for Human Values; Senior Research Fellow at Lichtenberg Kolleg, University of Göttingen; and the Brady Distinguished Visiting Associate Professor, Northwestern University.
RSVP HERE
Join our mailing list!
Sign up for our mailing list to stay up-to-date with future UCLA Philosophy events, conferences, and colloquia!