No better story to tell
Framing Anti-Colonialism in the Aid Exposé Documentary
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4465220 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Liam O’loughlin (English, Capital University, Columbus, OH, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 345-361 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Postcolonial Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1368-8790 • E-ISSN: 1466-1888 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13688790.2020.1842133 |
| OpenAlex | W3106390247 |
| Language | EN |
This essay identifies the emergence of the aid exposé documentary, a set of contemporary films that overtly challenge the moral benevolence and economic function of humanitarian and development aid. These films are situated within a broader twenty-first century public critique of aid but constitute an aesthetic divergence from the images of suffering found in the long, intertwined history of visual media and humanitarianism. Against that backdrop, aid exposé films frame themselves as anti-colonial correctives to aid’s structural exclusion, elevating conflicting notions of entrepreneurialism and the process of popular sovereignty. The essay argues that the aid exposé is a malleable genre, mobilised to both consolidate and challenge the conditions of neoliberalism, and thus marks an important popularisation of the ongoing ‘aid debate’
Aesthetics · Art · Colonialism · EXPOSE · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Situated · Sociology · Sovereignty · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · History · International Development and Aid · Law · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development
| Highly cited | No |
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