ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that the cultivation of visual literacy and for a renewal of confidence in the world-maintaining power of human inventiveness. It examines examples of visualizing law in both its sensational and sublime aspects inside the courtroom and in the culture at large. One lesson of the digital baroque is that the rationalist assumptions underlying modern jurisprudence are manifestly inadequate to the demands of the times. For the baroque mind, lurking beneath the surface of visual spectacle and delight lies a formidable terror. It takes shape in the thought that perhaps there is nothing else but this, the dancing forms, these infinitely unfolding arabesques. Entanglements ground and focus the attentive mind in concrete human encounters.