Book review: Sensible politics: the visual culture of nongovernmental activism

"Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism." Meg McLagan and Yates McKee. MIT Press. November 2012. --- Political acts are encoded in medial forms – punch holes on a card, images on a live stream, tweets about events immediately unfolding – that have force, shaping people as subjects and forming the contours of what is sensible, legible, and visible. In doing so they define the terms of political possibility and create terrain for political acts. Sensible Politics considers the constitutive role played by aesthetic and performative techniques in the staging of claims by nongovernmental activists. Relevant for students of anthropology and social psychology as well as media and communications and politics, the book will be equally useful to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of how images and visual culture surround and affect individuals and society, writes Kate Saffin.