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PRAISE FOR VIOLENCE: HUMANS IN DARK TIMES
“Many of us live today with a pervasive sense of unease, worried that our own safety is at risk, or that of our loved ones, or that of people whose bad circumstances appear to us through networked media. Violence feels ever-present. Natasha Lennard and Brad Evans help us to analyze those feelings, talking with a wide range of thinkers in order to gain insight into the worst of what humans do, and challenging us to imagine a world in which violence is no longer a given. Their book is full of surprising insights and intelligent compassion.”
—Sarah Leonard, co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century
“In Violence, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard have created, alongside their interview subjects, a kaleidoscopic exploration of the concept of violence, in terrains expected and not, in prose taut and unexpectedly gorgeous. Their philosophical rigor provides the reader with an intellectual arsenal against the violence of the current moment.”
—Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood
“This is a book that will make everyone feel clever. Reflections on violence, both actual, and the possibility of, mediating so much of social interaction, also makes for critical reading. The range of interviews with leading academics, to filmmakers and artists, is impressive, at once immediate and relevant, but also profoundly philosophical. More essentially, though, the conversations underline the need and suggest ways to resist and organize in a visionary way, in the extraordinary times we live in.”
—Razia Iqbal, BBC News
“Standing on their own, the interview subjects featured in Violence: Humans In Dark Times might be identified as the foremost intellectuals, artists, and activists engaged with questions of how violence moves, acts, and is witnessed in the world. But summoned together in this collection by two political thinkers distinguished by both their unmatched intellects and their willingness to deploy those intellects in acts of service rather than performance, their voices materialize as a creative space large and fertile enough to lay the groundwork for an actionable hope. The result is a groundbreaking testament to the vital role of the abstract and the theoretical for understanding the depth to which violence is entrenched in human experience and consciousness and to the necessity of empathetic intellectual stewards like Lennard and Evans to direct such understanding into transformative action. We would be wise to read this collection with a similar eye toward service, and in so doing, open ourselves up to the rare mercy of no longer having to stand on our own.”
—Alana Massey, author of All The Lives I Want
VIOLENCE
Humans in Dark Times
Brad Evans & Natasha Lennard
Copyright © 2018 by Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard
Interviews published in this volume have previously appeared in the New York Times and Los Angeles Review of Books, and are reprinted here with the publishers’ permission.
All Rights Reserved.
Open Media Series Editor: Greg Ruggiero
Cover art: detail from Being Open and Empty. Copyright © 2005 by Wang Dongling. Hanging scroll; ink on paper. 88 x 57 in. (223.5 x 114.8 cm). Gift of the artist, 2013.
(2013.188.2)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Evans, Brad, 1968- author. | Lennard, Natasha, author.
Title: Violence : humans in dark times / Brad Evans & Natasha Lennard.
Description: San Francisco, CA : City Lights Books, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018002365 (print) | LCCN 2018019869 (ebook) | ISBN 9780872867802 | ISBN 9780872867543
Subjects: LCSH: Violence. | Violence--Social aspects. | Social media. Classification: LCC HM886 (ebook) | LCC HM886 .E936 2018 (print) | DDC
303.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002365
ISBN: 978-0-87286-754-3
eISBN: 978-0-8728-6780-2
City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
Brad Evans dedicates this book to his loving and caring parents, Steven and Wendy. Without their support and guidance nothing in his world would have been possible.
Natasha Lennard dedicates this book to her mother, Sindy, sine qua non, and to Lukas, her partner in counter-violence.
CONTENTSIntroduction: Humans in Dark Times1. Thinking against ViolenceNatasha Lennard & Brad Evans2. Theater of ViolenceSimon Critchley3. The Perils of Being a Black PhilosopherGeorge Yancy4. The Refugee Crisis Is Humanity’s CrisisZygmunt Bauman5. Our Crime against the Planet and OurselvesAdrian Parr6. The Violence of ForgettingHenry A. Giroux7. When Law Is Not JusticeGayatri Chakravort Spivak8. What Protest Looks LikeNicholas Mirzoeff9. Who Is “Evil” and Who Is the Victim?Simona Forti10. Art in a Time of AtrocityBracha L. Ettinger11. Is Humanism Really Humane?Cary Wolfe12. The Intellectual Life of ViolenceRichard Bernstein13. The Violence of LoveMoira Weigel14. The Director’s EyeOliver
