This periscope extends a conversation that took place on the occasion of the book launch held at New York University on April 30, 2016 to mark the publication of Allen Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics, and Dead Memory (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Papers presented here are by Jonathan Beller, Talal Asad, Drucilla Cornell, and Allen Feldman.
The title “Degrounding War and the State” indicates a shift in the mediation of sovereignty in registers ranging from acts of torture and war, various (extra-) juridical practices, and the (meta-) physical constitution of entities subject to sovereign power. Among the many questions staged here regarding the changed media ecology of sovereign power is one about the legacy of deconstruction, either as a practice of the unsettling of entrenched power formations, or, in a disconcerting turn, as itself having become a dominant practice of state-making—indicated by the emergence of what Feldman calls “the deconstructive state.”
This edition of Periscope extends a conversation that took place on the occasion of the book launch held at New York University on April 30, 2016 to mark the publication of Allen Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics … Continue reading “Introduction: Degrounding War and the State”
Archives of the Insensible is a book I will turn to again and again, for insight, inspiration, aspiration, a model of indefatiguable critique, and well, just to finish the damn thing. I’ve been reading Allen’s work for a long time … Continue reading “State of the Art of the State of the…Questions from the Real for Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible“
I want to begin by thanking Allen Feldman for asking me to participate in this event to discuss his important new book. Feldman offers us one of the most powerful critiques of violence through what he calls “micrological description.” From … Continue reading “Feldman’s Critique of Violence”
I am struck by the rich and provocative detail of this remarkable book and by the disturbing insights it offers into the performance of violence in our time and how its representations make it banal and acceptable. My observations arising … Continue reading “Remarks on Allen Feldman’s Archives of the Insensible“
Nota Bene: The following dangerous supplement can be read as a resynthesis of one of the core threads running through Archives of the Insensible: Of War, Photopolitics and Dead Memory (University of Chicago Press, 2015), which engages war as the … Continue reading “The Accidentalization of War”
