Synopses & Reviews
What compels us to look at shocking photographs or, alternatively, to look away? Should the media use disturbing images to inform, at the risk of offending? How is our sense of politics, morality, and culture affected when we are exposed to gruesome images of accidents and disasters, murder and execution, grief and death?
In Body Horror, John Taylor addresses these questions by examining how the media presents unsettling pictures, especially those of dead and injured "foreigners." Drawing on recent experiences in the Gulf, Bosnia and Rwanda, Taylor argues that documentary photography, for all the horror it reproduces, ultimately defines a democracy.
Fully aware of the voyeuristic aspects of photojournalism, Taylor probes the difficulty of applying moral imperatives when separating the utility of showing images of suffering and violence from the risk of either insulting or gratifying public sensibilities. A compelling documentary of photography's cultural and political power, Body Horror analyzes the moral responsibility attached to publishing and bearing witness to photographs of violence, and the historical amnesia that arises when such imagery remains unseen.
Review
"His work is insightful and provocative, linking ideas from a number of disciplines while he asks readers to consider the moral and ethical frameworks within which decisions are made about the publciation of disturbing photos."-Journal of Mass Media Ethics,
Review
“Race in Translation is a masterpiece, an extraordinarily bold and brilliant book rich with erudition and insight. The imaginative and in-depth analyses of intercultural conflicts and coalescences offer original and generative answers to the most important questions haunting contemporary scholarship and civic life.” -George Lipsitz,author of How Racism Takes Place
Review
"A deeply researched, provocative synthesis of the ways in which race has been conceptualized in Brazil, United States and France. Arguing that ‘All nations are transnations, the authors explore the ‘Red, ‘Black and ‘White Atlantic, tracking the circulation of ideas and their translation. In doing so, they critically address both the rightist and leftist blindness to race. This is a balanced, thoughtful and clearly written work that should be used widely in university classrooms." -Françoise Vergès,Goldsmiths College, London
Synopsis
Synopsis
While the term “culture wars” often designates the heated arguments in the English-speaking world spiraling around race, the canon, and affirmative action, in fact these discussions have raged in diverse sites and languages. Race in Translation charts the transatlantic traffic of the debates within and between three zones—the U.S., France, and Brazil. Stam and Shohat trace the literal and figurative translation of these multidirectional intellectual debates, seen most recently in the emergence of postcolonial studies in France, and whiteness studies in Brazil. The authors also interrogate an ironic convergence whereby rightist politicians like Sarkozy and Cameron join hands with some leftist intellectuals like Benn Michaels, Žižek, and Bourdieu in condemning “multiculturalism” and “identity politics.” At once a report from various “fronts” in the culture wars, a mapping of the germane literatures, and an argument about methods of reading the cross-border movement of ideas, the book constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of the Diasporic and the Transnational.
About the Author
Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University. Among his many publications are Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation (2004); Film Theory: An Introduction (2000); Francois Truffaut and Friends (2006); Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture (1997); and Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (1989).
Ella Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University. Among her many publications are Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices (2006); Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age (1998); Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation (1989; New Edition 2010); and Le sionisme du point de vue de ses victimes juives: les juifs orientaux en Israel (Paris, 1988; 2006).
Together, Shohat/Stam coauthored Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994); Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism (2007); and co-edited Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media (2000).
Table of Contents