ABSTRACT

A new collection of essays by the internationally recognized cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay that revolves around the themes of violence and visuality, with essays on the Holocaust and virtual reality, religious violence, the art world, and the Unicorn Killer, among a wide range of other topics.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|14 pages

Against Consolation

Walter Benjamin and the Refusal to Mourn

chapter 2|6 pages

Peace in Our Time

chapter 3|7 pages

Fathers and Sons

Jan Philipp Reemtsma and the Frankfurt School

chapter 4|8 pages

The Ungrateful Dead

chapter 5|14 pages

When did the Holocaust End?

Reflections on Historical Objectivity

chapter 6|10 pages

The Conversion of the Rose

chapter 7|6 pages

Pen Pals with the Unicorn Killer

chapter 8|9 pages

Kwangju

From Massacre to Biennale

chapter 9|15 pages

Must Justice Be Blind?

The Challenge of Images to the Law

chapter 10|15 pages

Diving into the Wreck

Aesthetic Spectatorship at the Turn of the Millennium

chapter 11|13 pages

Astronomical Hindsight

The Speed of Light and Virtual Reality

chapter 12|15 pages

Returning the Gaze

The American Response to the French Critique of Ocularcentrism

chapter 13|14 pages

Lafayette's Children

The American Reception of French Liberalism

chapter 14|14 pages

Somaesthetics and Democracy

John Dewey and Contemporary Body Art

chapter 15|6 pages

The Paradoxes of Religious Violence

chapter 16|5 pages

Fearful Symmetries

9/11 and the Agonies of the Left