Abstract
Aesthetic theories are illuminating, but they become politically significant only in the context of real-life situations. This is why I now provide practical illustrations of the conceptual claims I advanced in the previous chapter.
Maybe this is how things look like when there is no one there to see them.
Don DeLillo, Falling Man1
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Notes
Don DeLillo, Falling Man (New York: Scribner, 2007), p. 5.
Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (London: Phoenix Press, 1999).
For a range of different interpretations see Ken Booth and Tim Dunne (eds), World in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002);
Michael Cox, ‘American Power Before and After 11 September?’ International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 2, 2002;
Philip Heymann, ‘Dealing with Terrorism’, International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3, winter 2001/2.
For asymmetric warfare in general see Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, ‘Countering Asymmetric Threats’, in A. B. Carter and J. P. White (eds), Keeping the Edge: Managing Defense for the Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: an Alternative History of Philosophy (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2003), pp. 1–2.
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 184–9.
David L. Eng, ‘The Value of Silence’, Theatre Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2002, pp. 85–6.
Jenny Edkins, ‘Forget Trauma? Responses to September 11’, International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 2, 2002, pp. 243–56.
Donald H. Rumsfeld, ‘Transforming the Military’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2002, p. 21.
Roxanne L. Euben, ‘Killing (for) Politics: Jihad, Martyrdom, and Political Action’, Political Theory, Vol. 30, No. 1, February 2002, p. 4.
Wesley K. Clark. Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire (Jackson, TN: Public Affairs, 2004).
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
See, for instance, Lloyd Axworthy, ‘Human Security and Global Governance’, Global Governance, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2001;
Roland Paris, ‘Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 2, Fall 2001.
Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), pp. 174–5.
Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 1–19, 42.
For broader, pre-9/11 discussion of this phenomenon see James Der Derian, Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001);
and Luc Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics, trans. G. Burchell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Qui a tué Daniel Pearl? (Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 2003), trans. J. X. Mitchell as Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (South Yarra, Victoria: Hardie Grant Books, 2003).
William Dalrymple, ‘Murder in Karachi’, New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, No. 19, December 2003.
Gilles Deleuze, Deux régimes de fous — Textes et entretiens (1975–1995) (Paris: Minuit, 2003); and Pierre Vidal-Naquet in Le Nouvel Observateur, 18 June 1979.
Gaby Wood, ‘Je suis un superstar’, The Observer, 15 June 2003.
Dalrymple, ‘Murder in Karachi’. See also Serge Halimi, ‘Romanquête our mauvaise enquête?’ in Le Monde Diplomatique, 11 December 2003.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: the Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 3, 236.
Jerrold Levinson, ‘Introduction’, in Levinson (ed.), Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 13.
Hayden White, ‘The Fiction of Factual Representation’, in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 123.
Peter Ward, ‘Graffiti at Ground Zero: Gordon Bennett Responded to September 11 in the Only Way He Knew How’, The Australian, 6 March 2002, p. 17.
Marc Pitzke, ‘Schlanker Kompromiss am Ort des Terrors’, Der Spiegel, 19 December 2003;
Herbert Muschamp, ‘A Skyscraper Has a Chance to be Nobler’, New York Times, 20 December 2003.
Cited in David W. Dunlap, ‘1,776-Foot Design is Unveiled for World Trade Center Tower’, New York Times, 20 December 2003.
For background see, for instance, Paul Goldberger, Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York (New York: Random House, 2004) and Daniel Libeskind, Breaking Ground (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004).
David W. Dunlap, ‘Seeking the Sublime in the Simple to Mark 9/11’, New York Times, 27 November 2003.
Deyan Sudjic, ‘Is There a Hero for Ground Zero?’ The Observer, 7 December 2003.
Glenn Collins and David W. Dunlap, ‘The 9/11 Memorial: How Pluribus Became Unum’, New York Times, 19 January 2004.
David W. Dunlap, ‘Ground Zero Jury Adheres to a Maxim: Less is More’, New York Times, 7 January 2004;
Alan Feuer, ‘On World Trade Center Memorial, Criticism Outstrips Praise’, New York Times, 23 November 2003.
Eric Fischl, ‘A Memorial That’s True to 9/11’, New York Times, 19 December 2003.
Herbert Muschamp, ‘Amid Embellishment and Message, a Voice of Simplicity Cries to be Heard’, New York Times, 20 November 2003.
Michael Arad, ‘Reflecting Absence: a Memorial at the World Trade Center Site’, in ‘Finalists’ Statements’, New York Times, 19 November 2003.
Glenn Collins, ‘8 Designs Confront Many Agendas at Ground Zero’, New York Times, 20 November 2003;
Thomas Keenan, ‘Making the Dead Count, Literally’, New York Times, 30 November 2003.
Glenn Collins and David W. Dunlap, ‘Unveiling of the Trade Center Memorial Reveals an Abundance of New Details’, New York Times, 15 January 2004.
Kurt Loder, ‘Bruce Springsteen: The Rising’, in Rolling Stone, 22 August 2002, http://rollingstone.com./reviews (accessed January 2004).
Andreas Obst, ‘Liebeslieder an den Feuerwehrmann’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 August 2003, p. 37.
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA (Sony Music Entertainment, 2003).
George Will, cited in Jim Cullen, Born in the USA: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 2.
Alexis Patridis, ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’, The Guardian, 26 July 2002.
My reflections on emotions here are greatly indebted to collaborative work I have done on the subject with Emma Hutchison. I would like to thank her for being able to draw on some of the respective ideas we have explored — and continue to do so — in common: Roland Bleiker and Emma Hutchison, ‘Fear No More: Emotions and World Politics’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2008, pp. 115–35;
Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker, ‘Emotional Reconciliation: Reconstituting Identity and Community After Trauma’, European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008, pp. 385–403;
Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker, ‘Emotions in the War on Terror’, in A. J. Bellamy, R. Bleiker, S. E. Davis and R. Devetak (eds), Security and the War on Terror (London: Routledge: 2007), pp. 57–70.
Carol Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals’, Signs: Journal of Women in Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1987;
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Jonathan Mercer, ‘Approaching Emotion in International Politics’, paper presented at the International Studies Association Conference, San Diego, California, 25 April 1996, p. 1.
Jonathan Mercer, ‘Rationality and Psychology in International Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 59, Winter 2005, p. 97;
Neta C. Crawford, ‘The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotions and Emotional Relationships’, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4, Spring 2000, pp. 116–36.
Thierry Balzacq and Robert Jervis, ‘Logics of Mind and International System: a Journey with Robert Jervis’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 30, 2004, pp. 564–5.
Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 116.
Andrew Linklater, ‘Emotions and World Politics’, Aberystwyth Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 2, 2004, pp. 71–7.
For examples of the rare authors who engage the role of emotions in international relations see Richard Ned Lebow, ‘Reason, Emotion and Cooperation’, International Politics, Vol. 42, 2005, p. 283;
William Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 35, 63–6, 74–6;
Andrew A. G. Ross, ‘Coming in From the Cold: Constructivism and Emotions’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2006, pp. 197–222.
See, for instance, Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004);
Jack M. Barbalet (ed.), Emotions and Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002);
Jack M. Barbalet, Emotion, Social Theory and Social Structure: a Macrosociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
Gillian Bendelow and Simon J. Williams (eds), Emotions and Social Life: Critical Themes and Contemporary Issues (London: Routledge, 1998);
Karin M. Fierke, ‘Whereof We Can Speak, Thereof We Must Not Be Silent: Trauma, Political Solipsism and War’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 30, 2004, pp. 471–91;
Kate Nash, ‘Cosmopolitan Political Community: Why Does It Feel So Right?’, Constellations: an International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2003, pp. 506–18;
Thomas J. Scheff, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, pp. 1–22. Robert C. Solomon Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice and The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life (Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003);
Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, pp. 1–22. See also Michael J. Shapiro, ‘Slow Looking: the Ethics and Politics of Aesthetics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2008, pp. 181–97.
I am indebted to Martin Leet for discussions about this issue. See his Aftereffects of Knowledge in Modernity: Politics, Aesthetics and Individuality (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004). See also Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001);
Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: the Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. xiii;
John Girling, Emotion and Reason in Social Change: Insights form Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
Malcolm Budd, Music and the Emotions: the Philosophical Theories (London: Routledge, 1985), p. x.
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the World (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 72.
Schopenhauer cited in Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, pp. 259–60; see also Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972).
K. Lieberman, Understanding Interaction in Central Australia: an Ethnomethodological Study of Australian Aboriginal People (Boston: Routledge, 1985), pp. 60, 169.
Gordon Graham, Philosophy of the Arts: an Introduction to Aesthetics (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 80.
Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said, Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), pp. 44–5.
Michael J. Shapiro, Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997);
Michael Dillon, Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought (New York: Routledge, 1996).
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© 2009 Roland Bleiker
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Bleiker, R. (2009). Art after 9/11. In: Aesthetics and World Politics. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244375_3
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