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Frames of war : when is life grievable? / Judith Butler.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: London ; New York : Verso, 2010.Edition: Pbk. edDescription: xxx, 193 p. ; 20 cmISBN:
  • 1844676269 (pbk.)
  • 9781844676262 (pbk.)
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 303/BUT 22 3470
LOC classification:
  • HM1116 .B88 2010
Contents:
Introduction: Precarious Life, Grievable Life --- 1. Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect --- 2. Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag --- 3. Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time --- 4. Non-Thinking in the Name of the Normative --- 5. The Claim of Non-Violence.
Summary: "Frames of War begins where Butler's Precarious Lives left off: on the idea that we cannot grieve for those lost lives that we never saw as lives to begin with. In this age of CNN-mediated war, the lives of those wretched populations of the earth -- the refugees; the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture; the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement -- are always presented to us as already irretrievable and thereby already lost. We may shake our heads at their wretchedness but then we sacrifice them nonetheless, for they are already forgone. By analyzing the different frames through which we experience war, Butler calls for a reorientation of the Left toward the precarity of those lives. Only by recognizing those lives as precarious lives -- lives that are not yet lost but are ever fragile and in need of protection -- might the Left stand in unity against the violence perpetrated through arbitrary state power. -- Publisher description.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts 303/BUT 3470 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available SSLA-B-3470

Originally published: 2009.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Precarious Life, Grievable Life --- 1. Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect --- 2. Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag --- 3. Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time --- 4. Non-Thinking in the Name of the Normative --- 5. The Claim of Non-Violence.

"Frames of War begins where Butler's Precarious Lives left off: on the idea that we cannot grieve for those lost lives that we never saw as lives to begin with. In this age of CNN-mediated war, the lives of those wretched populations of the earth -- the refugees; the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture; the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement -- are always presented to us as already irretrievable and thereby already lost. We may shake our heads at their wretchedness but then we sacrifice them nonetheless, for they are already forgone. By analyzing the different frames through which we experience war, Butler calls for a reorientation of the Left toward the precarity of those lives. Only by recognizing those lives as precarious lives -- lives that are not yet lost but are ever fragile and in need of protection -- might the Left stand in unity against the violence perpetrated through arbitrary state power. -- Publisher description.

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