Occupy the Image

This chapter reflects on the popular protests that became collectively known as the Occupy movements and emerged as a response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Photographic technologies of capture, manipulation and dissemination have become increasingly ubiquitous, operating within and across a plethora of different discourses, from eye witnessing of events to the construction of identity. A particular moment that exemplifies the importance of images for making dissensus visible within the Occupy movement occurred on 18 November 2011, when police officer Lieutenant John Pike pepper-sprayed student protesters at a sit down protest on the University of California's Davis Campus. The footage and subsequent images that emerged from this event show a single line of students sat on the ground linking arms while Lieutenant Pike casually walks up and down the line spraying them with a large canister of 'weapons grade' pepper spray.