Abstract
Therefore, “Stanfield appealed to the immediate, visceral experience of the slave ship, over and against abstract knowledge about the slave trade, as decisive to abolition…. The abolitionist’s most potent weapon was the dissemination of drawings of the slave ship Brooks.” Rediker asserts that these images were “to be among the most effective propaganda any social movement has ever created.” The images would instantaneously “make the viewer identify and sympathize with the ‘injured Africans’ on the lower decks of the ship…,” while also producing a sense of moral outrage.2
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Olson, G. (2013). The Empathetic Power of Images. In: Empathy Imperiled. SpringerBriefs in Political Science, vol 10. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6117-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6117-3_9
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