To know in the subjunctive: New abolitionist imagetexts and the specter of modern slavery

Abstract Today’s antitrafficking movement situates the crimes against which it struggles as invisible and possibly unknowable, even as anti-antitrafficking skeptics question the reliability of widely cited trafficking prevalence estimates. Behind this controversy, an important question has been omitted: If verifiable data are lacking, how has a sense of urgency been built around modern slavery’s alleged omnipresence? The websites of leading new abolitionist organizations provide a basis for a critical reading of today’s antislavery discourse. Expositions of the wrongs toggle between narrative-based/emotive and evidence-based/rational modes. The first evokes the hiddenness and hence unknowability of the wrongs. The second exhorts readers/viewers to ignore doubt and support antislavery action in spite of not knowing against what. More than sheer ambivalence, then, an imagetextual art is built by new abolitionist websites, capitalizing on the esthetic principle that not knowing is more alluring to the eye than is knowing.