The eleven interconnected essays of this book penetrate the dense historical knots binding terror, power and the aesthetic sublime and bring the results to bear on the trauma of September 11 and the subsequent War on Terror. Through rigorous critical studies of major works of post-1945 and contemporary culture, the book traces transformations in art and critical theory in the aftermath of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Critically engaging with the work of continental philosophers, Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard and of contemporary artists Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, and Boaz Arad, the book confronts the shared cultural conditions that made Auschwitz and Hiroshima possible and offers searching meditations on the structure and meaning of the traumatic historical 'event'. Ray argues that globalization cannot be separated from the collective tasks of working through historical genocide. He provocatively concludes that the current US-led War on Terror must be grasped as a globalized inability to mourn.

Autorentext
GENE RAY has taught at New College of Florida, USA and the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is a former German Chancellor's Scholar of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction: The Hit Reading the Lisbon Earthquake: Adorno, Lyotard, and the Contemporary Sublime Joseph Beuys and the 'After-Auschwitz' Sublime Ground Zero: Hiroshima Haunts 9/11 Mirroring Evil: Auschwitz, Art, and the 'War on Terror' Little Glass House of Horror: Taking Damien Hirst Seriously Blasted Moments: Remarking a Hiroshima Image Installing a 'New Cosmopolitics': Derrida and the Writers The Trauerspiel in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility: Boaz Arad's Hitler Videos Listening with the Third Ear: Echoes From Ground Zero Conditioning Adorno: 'After Auschwitz' Now