The Burden of Reciprocity
by Kevin Lewis O’Neill (University of Toronto)

Monday, October 23, 2023 in LR Wilson 1003, 2:30-4pm

Photographs are not just meant to be seen but also touched, held, and gifted. Father David Roney (1921–2003) of central Minnesota understood this point all too well. A prolifically abusive priest in the United States, Roney moved to Guatemala in 1994 with his point-and-shoot camera. There, he ministered to a remote Indigenous community, quickly becoming the primary author of its visual history by gifting thousands of photographs. Roney’s seeming generosity allowed those living in poverty to attain a visual record of their lives, but his gifts—like all gifts—put these people under obligations. Photographs allowed Roney to build trust with families, enter their homes, and then gain access to their children. It is a tragic case that foregrounds how the circulation and exchange of photographs as material objects can create ways of perpetrating violence through what this essay understands as the burden of reciprocity.

A cultural anthropologist, O’Neill’s work focuses on the moral dimensions of contemporary political practice in Latin America. He is the author of City of God (2010), Secure the Soul (2015), Hunted (2019), and the bilingual photography book Art of Captivity (2020); as well as the editor of volumes on genocide (2009), urban insecurity (2011), ritual (2012), political will (2014), and captivity (2019).

Upcoming department colloquia:

Monday, November 13 – 2:30-4pm
“Martyrs and Migrants: Persecution Politics Between Egypt and the United States”
Candace Lukasik (Mississippi State University)

Monday, November 20 – 2:30-4pm
“From Farmworkers to Refugees: The Moral Life of Agrarian Debt among Syrians in Lebanon”
China Sajadian (Vassar College)

Monday, December 4 – 2:30-4pm
“Multispecies Entanglements in Great Lakes Agricultural Landscapes, AD 1000-1300”
Lindi Masur (McMaster University)