Burman E
Department of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.
Disasters. 1994 Sep;18(3):238-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7717.1994.tb00310.x.
In this paper I explore the emotional interests maintained by the imagery of children used in Third World emergencies. Boundaries between adult and child are reproduced through relations of paternalism between North and South, such that the infantilisation of the South exemplified in imagery of children works to secure the competence and maturity of the Northern donor. Drawing on both analyses of the cultural origins and meanings of concepts of childhood and psychoanalytic perspectives, I suggest that media coverage of disasters arouses both identification and strategies to ward off and protect from the anxiety this brings. The gendered as well as geographical distribution of qualities of children's innocence and experience are discussed, drawing on both general imagery of children and recent coverage of children and child-saving, particularly in the former Yugoslavia. Developing analyses of 'disaster pornography', the paper explores how children appear as the principal focal objects onto which attention is pinned and as the signifiers of distress. This is at the cost of dehumanizing both children, their families and their cultures, and rendering them passive objects of a western gaze which seeks to confirm its own agency and omnipotence to ward off its own insecurities. While aid organisations and campaigns necessarily engage with, and sometimes collude with, these reactions, the paper ends by suggesting that there may be strategies whereby images of children can function to comment on rather than maintain prevailing colonial and paternalistic relations.
在本文中，我探讨了在第三世界紧急情况中使用儿童形象所维系的情感利益。成人与儿童之间的界限通过南北之间的家长式关系得以重现，以至于在儿童形象中体现出的南方幼稚化，起到了巩固北方捐助者的能力和成熟度的作用。借鉴对童年概念的文化起源和意义的分析以及精神分析视角，我认为媒体对灾难的报道既引发了认同感，也引发了抵御和防范其所带来焦虑的策略。本文讨论了儿童纯真和经历特质在性别以及地域上的分布情况，借鉴了儿童的一般形象以及近期关于儿童和拯救儿童的报道，尤其是在前南斯拉夫的报道。通过对“灾难色情”的深入分析，本文探讨了儿童如何成为人们注意力聚焦的主要对象以及痛苦的象征。这是以将儿童、其家庭和文化非人化，并使其成为西方凝视的被动对象为代价的，而这种凝视旨在确认自身的能动性和全能性以抵御自身的不安全感。虽然援助组织和活动必然会参与并有时助长这些反应，但本文最后提出，或许存在一些策略，使儿童形象能够起到对当前殖民和家长式关系进行评论而非维持的作用。
