Political Cartoons as Visual Securitisation in Ethnic Conflict Environments

This paper explores how visual art and in particular political cartoons develops into a routinized and durable mode of visual securitization. This could occur in protracted ethnic conflicts where this form of art supports, and is supported by, the deeply established perceptions of threats and “enemy-others”, and where cartoons are frequently used to remind the audience who or what is a threat, rather than simply highlight a political development. In such environments, political cartooning may acquire its own securitizing ‘voice’ as it can sustain issues and actors into the realm of existential threats ‘autonomously’, without the use of ‘security grammar’ of written or oral speech acts. Thus, the inclusion of these images as part of an immediate inter-textual context is not necessary for a successful securitizing act. The paper uses the protracted Cyprus conflict as a case study, examining political cartoons from the Greek Cypriot press from the 1950’s onward.