The Ethics of Extremity
On Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Each Other
Will be published approx. on 19. March 2026
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-1-6669-5755-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Ethics of Extremity critically examines how we can understand, interact with, and intervene in a world where what was once considered extreme has become normalized as part of everyday life.
Contributors invite us to re-examine our explicit and implicit expectations that ethics would curtail extremity-and how those assumptions have frequently failed. This opens up a central question: what is the relationship between ethics and extremity today? Rather than offering fixed solutions to this question, the chapters invite readers to rethink how ethics might respond to a world in which extremity is embedded in everyday experience. Through contributions from scholars, artists, and activists, the volume explores how extremity manifests in areas such as public health, digital media, gender violence, combat sports, and ecological collapse. Drawing on diverse methods and contexts, the book unfolds across five thematic interventions proposed by the authors for grappling with extremity today: engaging in uncomfortable forms of closeness; seeing and feeling extremity anew; reclaiming truth in a post-truth era; rethinking illegality and marginality; and using extremity as a teaching tool. Together, these offer entry points for reimagining what ethical life might look like under conditions of persistent crisis.
Contributors invite us to re-examine our explicit and implicit expectations that ethics would curtail extremity-and how those assumptions have frequently failed. This opens up a central question: what is the relationship between ethics and extremity today? Rather than offering fixed solutions to this question, the chapters invite readers to rethink how ethics might respond to a world in which extremity is embedded in everyday experience. Through contributions from scholars, artists, and activists, the volume explores how extremity manifests in areas such as public health, digital media, gender violence, combat sports, and ecological collapse. Drawing on diverse methods and contexts, the book unfolds across five thematic interventions proposed by the authors for grappling with extremity today: engaging in uncomfortable forms of closeness; seeing and feeling extremity anew; reclaiming truth in a post-truth era; rethinking illegality and marginality; and using extremity as a teaching tool. Together, these offer entry points for reimagining what ethical life might look like under conditions of persistent crisis.
Reviews / Votes
This compelling collection probes ethics in extreme contexts-from participatory photography with heroin users to feminist metal pedagogy amid violence, and the unsettling terrain of eco-horror-offering vital insights for scholars of ethics, aesthetics, and social change. * Karl Spracklen, Leeds Beckett University, UK * The Ethics of Extremity is a vital and timely volume that encourages us to form new relationships with the extremes of twenty-first century life, in which media saturation and social silos have normalized all manner of political, social, and economic extremisms. The book's chapters argue for purposeful and discomfiting engagement with the extreme as a tactic for reclaiming our ability to be shocked, navigating post-truth mediascapes, and ultimately wielding the extreme as a tool for intervention and empowerment. * Ross Hagen, Utah Valley University, USA *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
40 bw figures, 2 tables
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
568 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-6669-5755-6 (9781666957556)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Nelson Varas-Diaz | Vivek Venkatesh
The Ethics of Extremity
On Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Each Other
E-Book
01/2026
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€90.99
Available for download
Nelson Varas-Diaz | Vivek Venkatesh
The Ethics of Extremity
On Hearing, Seeing, and Feeling Each Other
E-Book
01/2026
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€90.99
Available for download
Persons
Nelson Varas-Diaz is Professor of Global and Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University, USA.
Vivek Venkatesh is Dean of the Faculty of Education and a James McGill Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, CAN.
Vivek Venkatesh is Dean of the Faculty of Education and a James McGill Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, CAN.
Content
List of Tables and Figures
Chapter 1: Towards an Ethics of Extremity by Nelson Varas-Diaz and Vivek Venkatesh
Section 1: Engagement in an Uncomfortable Closeness
Chapter 2: Hard Listening: An Ethics of Extremity by Veronica Mockler
Chapter 3: Invisible in Plain Sight: The Ethics of Participatory Photography among Street-Based Heroin Users in The Dominican Republic by Mark Padilla
Chapter 4: Quixotism as Extremity: The Aesthetics and Politics of Occlusion by Bradley J. Nelson
Section 2: Seeing/Feeling Extremity Anew
Chapter 5: Miniaturization and the Ethical Magnification of Extremity by Nelson Varas-Diaz
Chapter 6: "We Shall By Morning Inherit the Earth": Eco-horror and the Limits of Ethics by Jason Wallin
Chapter 7: When the Game is not a Game: Extremity and the Politics of Combat Sports Daniel Nevarez Araujo
Section 3: Reclaiming Truth in a Post-Truth Era
Chapter 8: Conspiratorial Illusions and the Monetization of Fundamentalist Fantasies in Our AI Assisted World: Lessons on Extremity from the Cervantes Lab by David R. Castillo
Chapter 9: Examining Marketing Practices and Products that Facilitate Religious Extremism by Jeffrey S. Podoshen
Section 4: Rethinking Illegality
Chapter 10: One Needle at a Time: Illegal Communal Acupuncture in Disaster-Stricken Puerto Rico by Sheilla R. Madera
Chapter 11: Ethics of Addressing Extreme Poverty: Permanent Supportive Housing as Social Infrastructure for the Formerly Unhoused in Miami-Dade County by Matthew D. Marr, Lisa Mueller and Catherine Velarde
Section 5: Extremity as a Teaching Tool
Chapter 12: Extremity as Pedagogy: A Case Study on Gender Training through Feminist Metal Strategies in Contexts of Extreme Violence Against Women by Susana Gonzalez-Martinez
Chapter 13: Discomfort as an Axis of Arts-Based Social Pedagogy: Ethics of Dissension in an Era of Polarization by Vivek Venkatesh
Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Chapter 1: Towards an Ethics of Extremity by Nelson Varas-Diaz and Vivek Venkatesh
Section 1: Engagement in an Uncomfortable Closeness
Chapter 2: Hard Listening: An Ethics of Extremity by Veronica Mockler
Chapter 3: Invisible in Plain Sight: The Ethics of Participatory Photography among Street-Based Heroin Users in The Dominican Republic by Mark Padilla
Chapter 4: Quixotism as Extremity: The Aesthetics and Politics of Occlusion by Bradley J. Nelson
Section 2: Seeing/Feeling Extremity Anew
Chapter 5: Miniaturization and the Ethical Magnification of Extremity by Nelson Varas-Diaz
Chapter 6: "We Shall By Morning Inherit the Earth": Eco-horror and the Limits of Ethics by Jason Wallin
Chapter 7: When the Game is not a Game: Extremity and the Politics of Combat Sports Daniel Nevarez Araujo
Section 3: Reclaiming Truth in a Post-Truth Era
Chapter 8: Conspiratorial Illusions and the Monetization of Fundamentalist Fantasies in Our AI Assisted World: Lessons on Extremity from the Cervantes Lab by David R. Castillo
Chapter 9: Examining Marketing Practices and Products that Facilitate Religious Extremism by Jeffrey S. Podoshen
Section 4: Rethinking Illegality
Chapter 10: One Needle at a Time: Illegal Communal Acupuncture in Disaster-Stricken Puerto Rico by Sheilla R. Madera
Chapter 11: Ethics of Addressing Extreme Poverty: Permanent Supportive Housing as Social Infrastructure for the Formerly Unhoused in Miami-Dade County by Matthew D. Marr, Lisa Mueller and Catherine Velarde
Section 5: Extremity as a Teaching Tool
Chapter 12: Extremity as Pedagogy: A Case Study on Gender Training through Feminist Metal Strategies in Contexts of Extreme Violence Against Women by Susana Gonzalez-Martinez
Chapter 13: Discomfort as an Axis of Arts-Based Social Pedagogy: Ethics of Dissension in an Era of Polarization by Vivek Venkatesh
Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors