Watching Babylon
The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture
Published on 12. October 2012
216 pages
978-1-134-29096-3 (ISBN)
Description
Groundbreaking and compelling, Watching Babylon examines the experience of watching the war against Iraq on television, on the internet, in the cinema and in print media.
Mirzoeff shows how the endless stream of images flowing from the Gulf has necessitated a new form of visual thinking, one which recognises that the war has turned images themselves into weapons. Drawing connections between the history and legend of ancient Babylon, the metaphorical Babylon of Western modernity, and everyday life in the modern suburb of Babylon, New York, Mirzoeff explores ancient concerns which have found new resonance in the present day.
In the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Watching Babylon illuminates the Western experience of the Iraqi war and makes us re-examine the very way we look at images of conflict.
Mirzoeff shows how the endless stream of images flowing from the Gulf has necessitated a new form of visual thinking, one which recognises that the war has turned images themselves into weapons. Drawing connections between the history and legend of ancient Babylon, the metaphorical Babylon of Western modernity, and everyday life in the modern suburb of Babylon, New York, Mirzoeff explores ancient concerns which have found new resonance in the present day.
In the tradition of Walter Benjamin, Watching Babylon illuminates the Western experience of the Iraqi war and makes us re-examine the very way we look at images of conflict.
Reviews / Votes
'A rich and helpful look at our dark times. Mirzoeff explains how watching Babylon-Iraq is simultaneously constructing and destroying the world we inhabit' - Chris Hables Gray'A tour de force of cultural criticism. Mirzoeff lays bare the complex and inexorable interconnections between the US-UK axis of power and Iraq - interconnections that strategically belie the brute logic of 'difference' currently determining the state of world affairs' "A tour de force by perhaps the most inventive--certainly the most wide-ranging-- practitioner of visual culture analysis in the world today. Focusing on the deadly vacuity of the Iraq Invasion, Mirzoeff describes the global media war with an unusually subtle attentiveness to its visual dimensions. More importantly, he situates his response inside a broader picturing of how globalizing capital and resurgent nation states are creating what he calls 'an empire of camps." - Terry Smith, University of Pittsburgh
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
15 s/w Abbildungen
15 Illustrations, black and white
File size
3,16 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-134-29096-3 (9781134290963)
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
Book
11/2004
1st Edition
Routledge
€59.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Book
11/2004
1st Edition
Routledge
€205.90
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Nicholas Mirzoeff is Associate Professor of Art at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Bodyscape; Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (1995) and An Introduction to Visual Culture (1999), and the editor of The Visual Culture Reader (second edition 2002)
Content
1. Babylonian Modernity 2. The Empire of Camps 3. Babylon: Long Island 4. Of Wars, Ancient and Modern
