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Refractions of Violence collects the recent essays of leading cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay. Ranging over a wide variety of subjects, from Walter Benjamin's response to World War I to the Holocaust and the events of 9/11, this collection addresses the troubling issues of the intersection of violence and visual culture. It argues that we live in a closed economy of violence in which no outside can provide us with a safe haven from the treat of sudden, perhaps even fatal injury, either real or symbolic. By examining a number of ways in which the dialectic of violence and counter-violence finds its way into the arts, both high and low, and permeates visual experience in general, it hopes to cast some light on the dark recesses of contemporary life.
Refractions of Violence collects the recent essays of leading cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay. Ranging over a wide variety of subjects, from Walter Benjamin's response to World War I to the Holocaust and the events of 9/11, this collection addresses the troubling issues of the intersection of violence and visual culture. It argues that we live in a closed economy of violence in which no outside can provide us with a safe haven from the treat of sudden, perhaps even fatal injury, either real or symbolic. By examining a number of ways in which the dialectic of violence and counter-violence finds its way into the arts, both high and low, and permeates visual experience in general, it hopes to cast some light on the dark recesses of contemporary life.
Introduction 1. Against Consolation: Walter Benjamin and the Refusal to Mourn 2. Peace in Our Time 3. Fathers and Sons: Jan Philipp Reemtsma and the Frankfurt School 4. The Ungrateful Dead 5. When Did the Holocaust End? Reflections on Historical Objectivity 6. The Conversion of the Rose 7. Pen Pals with the Unicorn Killer 8. Kwangju: From Massacre to Biennale 9. Must Justice Be Blind? The Challenge of Images to the Law 10. Diving into the Wreck: Aesthetic Spectatorship at the Turn of the Millennium 11. Astronomical Hindsight: The Speed of Light and Virtual Reality 12. Returning the Gaze: The American Response to the French Critique of Occularcentrism 13. Lafayette’s Children: The American Reception of French Liberalism 14. Somaesthetics and Democracy: John Dewey and Contemporary Body Art 15. The Paradoxes of Religious Violence 16. Fearful Symmetries: 9/11 and the Agonies of the Left
Martin Jay is Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of several books including Fin-de-Siéle Socialism and Other Essays (1988), Force Fields (1993) and co-editor of Vision in Context (1996), all published by Routledge.
"Refractions of Violence is a work of incidental greatness. Setting
out to write a series of occasional pieces largely centering on
issues of visuality and visual culture, Jay has produced almost as
a side-effect a sustained and penetrating inquiry into the 'finite
economy' of violence in the contemporary world. As a further,
unexpected bonus, he has given us an intimate, witty, nuanced, and
altogether memorable account of the conditions of intellectual life
in a culture of extremity. All the many virtues of Jay's remarkable
oeuvre are in evidence here, but in a form at once accessible and
deeply serious, informal and fully engaged." -- Geoffrey Galt
Harpham, National Humanities Center
"Well known for his histories of comprehensive scope and conceptual
drive, such as Marxism and Totality and Downcast Eyes: The
Denigration of Vision inTwentieth-Century French Thought, Martin
Jay is also one of most astute analysts of contemporary culture.
Refractions of Violence shows him at his best, developing lucid
insights into the new force of violence today, exploring its
strange symbiosis with visual culture, tracking its unpredictable
effects in political debate, delivering his critical assessments
with characteristic curiosity, sensitivity, and generosity." -- Hal
Foster, Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton
University
"The 20th century has been called the age of extremes. The 21st may
well become known as the age of violence. In this broad-ranging
series of essays -- for the most part scholarly but at times
striking a personal note -- Martin Jay skillfully traces the
multiple intersecting rays cast by violence and its representations
in both elite and popular culture. This excellent book should be of
great interest not only to historians but to anyone wanting greater
insight into a troubled present as it is shaped by a turbulent
past." -- Dominick LaCapra, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor of
Humanistic Studies, Cornell University
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