(Re)imagining Poverty: A Critical Visual Analysis of the Communicative and Affective Labor of Gendered International Development Discourses

This study brings together autonomist Marxist and feminist visual methods to critique forms of immaterial labor employed by international development programs focused on adolescent girls. Analyzing The Girl Effect's (TGEs) development testimonials, initiatives, and promotional materials, this article identifies how business models of development establish new subjectivities and modalities of empowerment. A critical analysis of communicative and affective labor recognizes the different work performed by visual and discursive representations of subjects of aid, donors, and the brand as they are strategically employed by development organizations. Examining the visual and discursive relationships between donor and beneficiary, cosmopolitan capitalist and local laborer, this project traces three communicative and affective strategies employed by development brands: individualizing empowerment, embodying entrepreneurship, and constituting affective capacities. After challenging existing gendered development strategies, this study turns toward the critical project of imaging alternative representations and realities of development rhetorics.