Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima to September 11 and Beyond (Studies in European Culture and History)

Terror and the Sublime in Art and Critical Theory penetrates the dense historical knots binding terror, power, and the aesthetic sublime. These twelve collected essays trace transformations in art and critical theory in the aftermath of Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Critically engaging with continental thinkers Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida, and contemporary artists Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, and Boaz Arad, this book offers searching meditations on the structure and meaning of the traumatic historical "event." Bringing his conclusions to bear on the trauma of September 11 and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, with a new chapter on the Obama administration's expanding use of drone warfare, Ray provocatively argues that the US-led War on Terror must be grasped as a global inability to mourn.