Publisher Description

Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry--to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. "To bring out the best of us," writes Evans, "we have to confront the worst of what humans are capable of doing to one another. In short, there is a need to confront the intolerable realities of violence in this world."These lively, in-depth exchanges among historians, theorists, and artists offer a timely and bracing look at how the increasing expression and acceptance of violence--in all strata of society--has become a defining feature of our 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" . . . 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"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 NewsPraise for Brad Evans:"One of the brightest critical minds of his generation"--Henry A. Giroux"The George Clooney of philosophy."--Russell Brand"Brad Evans has quickly emerged as one of the leading thinkers on violence in the contemporary world . . . he challenges us to stand up and speak out, and to courageously strive for a more emancipatory and inclusive world."--Adrian Parr, author of The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics

Notes

Trade paperback. In a conversational interview format, this title approaches the philosophical response to the violence of our historical moment, with the authors speaking to Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, David Theo Goldberg and other thinkers from philosophy, politics and culture.

Author Biography

Natasha Lennard is a journalist, essayist, and columnist. She is a contributing writer for The Intercept and her work has appeared regularly in The Nation, Esquire, The New York Times, and The New Inquiry, among others. She teaches critical journalism at the New School For Social Research in New York. Her second book, Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life, will be published by Verso, May 2019.Brad Evans is a political philosopher, critical theorist and writer, whose work specializes on the problem of violence. The author of some ten books and edited volumes, along with over fifty academic and media articles, he serves as Professor of Political Violence & Aesthetics at the University of Bath, UK. He is currently the lead editor for a dedicated section on violence and the arts/critical theory with The Los Angeles Review of Books. He also continues to direct the online resources centre
 
Brad's books have been the recipient of prestigious international awards and translated in many languages, including Spanish, Turkish, Korean and German. Among his latest books include Violence: Humans in Dark Times (with Natasha Lennard, City Lights, 2018); Histories of Violence: Post-War Critical Thought (with Terrell Carver, Zed Books, 2017); Portraits of Violence: An Illustrated History of Radical Thinking"(with Sean Michael Wilson, New Internationalist, 2016); Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle (with Henry Giroux, City Lights, 2015), Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously (with Julian Reid, Polity Press, 2014), Liberal Terror (Polity Press, 2013), and Deleuze & Fascism: Security - War - Aesthetics (with Julian Reid, Routledge, 2013).
 
Brad is currently working on a number of book projects, including The Atrocity Exhibition: Life in an Age of Total Violence (The Los Angeles Review of Books Press, 2019) and Ecce Humanitas: Beholding the Pain of Humanity (Columbia University Press, 2020). He is also working on a project that explores the aesthetics of human disappearance, while writing in his spare time a work of fiction. Website: www.brad-evans.co.uk

Table of Contents

Violence: Humans in Dark Times Chapter Synopsis Humans in Dark Times: An Introduction by Brad Evans & Natasha Lennard This is an introduction to the many forms of violence to be discussed in this anthology. Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard assert that it is of utmost importance to develop an engaged critique of violence. Violence is more than something abstract or theoretical, they say; it is a concrete violation of what it means to be human, "an attack upon a person''s dignity, their sense of selfhood, and their future. It is nothing less than the desecration of one''s position in the world...." Evans'' and Lennard''s goal with this anthology is to set in motion conversations between various actors and agencies of the intellectual and creative world in order to think about and develop an adequate critique of violence. Thinking Against Violence: Natasha Lennard & Brad Evans Natasha Lennard and Brad discuss the ubiquity of violence. Violence, says Evans, is the defining organizational principle for contemporary societies; they are structured around it. It matters less whether we are actual victims of violence, since we live in fear of it, and this rules the way we function. Evans goes on to discuss two types of violence -- the subtle, in which "disposable" populations experience continued and widespread suffering and are, for the most part, forgotten; and the spectacle, in which real events and cultural productions alike receive massive amounts of attention. Spectacular violence can end up prioritizing certain forms of suffering, which Evans believes is highly unethical. Violence is not merely the physical or even the psychological; it can take multiple forms, and it extends to extreme neglect and preventable suffering. Thus, it is important for us to dig deeper than individual events and understand the systemic and human dimensions of violence. Theater of Violence: Brad Evans & Simon Critchley This conversation focuses on the "direct" or physical form of violence. Critchley asserts that violence is never an isolated act that breaks a continuum of nonviolence; it is instead part of a historical cycle of violence and counter-violence. Belief in a right and a wrong legitimizes violence, turns justice into revenge. This is where theater, namely tragedy, helps. Ancient tragedy allowed Greeks to see their roles in the context of a history of violence. Shakespeare''s work showed the complexity of vengeance and the sequence of events that can lead to it. Evans and Critchley refer to sport as a type of theatrical violence, violence "refined and elevated," and an example of how violence can be both "made spectacular and harnessed for nonviolent ends," that is, spectators experience the excitement of violence without its repercussions. This potential for nonviolence can also be found, Critchley says, in art, as it offers an account of violence alongside the possibility of its suspension. The Perils of Being a Black Philosopher: Brad Evans & George Yancy George Yancy''s race-centered argument is that discursive violence is just as powerful as physical violence, that insults and slurs are just as effective in causing injury. The violence against black people, perpetuated under white supremacy, is historical and systemic. Black people live with the understanding that they are finite; even within the everyday, their lives are threatened (example: police brutality). The black body and other bodies of color are disposable. Yancy says that a movement beyond the civil rights movement, one that will shake the country to the core, is needed. The interview ends with Yancy addressing the issue of complicity --in order to truly overcome violence, we must also expose the types of violence that are not necessarily visible, the violence that quietly surrounds us every day. The Refugee Crisis is Humanity''s Crisis: Brad Evans & Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman''s interview focuses on refugee crises.He says that in the middle of the 20th century, the logic of migration changed; it has since become dissociated from the concept of conquest of new lands. While the act of migration used to consist of Europe''s redundant populations being unloaded onto less developed land, contemporary refugees, who are fleeing both physical and economic forms of violence, risk their lives only to arrive to countries that prioritize "internal security" over their safety. These refugees are stateless in a world that prioritizes citizenship, thus afforded no rights. According to Bauman, the figure of the refugee reveals the globalized nature of power and violence. Our nation-states, he says, are not suited for global interdependence, as they are too exclusive and competitive. Our Crime Against the Planet, and Ourselves: Natasha Lennard & Adrian Parr Climate degradation is a form of violence. In Adrian Parr''s words, it is injustice being perpetrated against multiple communities: ecosystems, other species, future generations, and, other human beings. Those who benefit most from environmental damage, such as fossil fuel corporations, would like us to think that we are all equally guilty of the harm being inflicted on our planet, but the truth of the matter is that our individual environmental footprints are nowhere near as large as theirs. If this arrangement continues, there will be a gratuitous loss of life both in the present and in the future. According to Parr, this problem cannot be properly challenged within our neoliberal capitalist system, since capitalism what has caused it. Parr says there are currently two dominant approaches to solutions: (1) to mediate capitalism or (2) to work outside of the system to resist it -- both of these approaches end up reinforcing capitalism. Parr believes the correct approach is to connect these conflicting models to create a new solidarity of continuous change. The Violence of Forgetting: Brad Evans & Henry A. Giroux This conversation with Henry A. Giroux concerns intellectual forms of violence. According to Giroux, ignorance is a defining feature of American political and cultural life today. There exists a refusal to acknowledge the violence of the past, which has disastrous political implications: weaponized ignorance leads to tragic inevitabilities. We need education beyond formal education, a better use of our society''s popular culture and media, which are just as relevant in shaping public thought. There is no genuine democracy without an informed public. Giroux addresses two problems with academia: (1) The notion of safe spaces lies in direct opposition to the notion that learning must be unsettling, that students should challenge common-sense assumptions despite discomfort; (2) "Gated intellectuals" sit in ivory towers and fail to involve themselves with social issues. Higher education has succumbed to official power and is losing its democratic roots. The rights of students should be the priority of any educational system. When Law is Not Justice: Brad Evans & Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak Chakravorti Spivak asserts that law is not equivalent to justice, and it is not enough to assure resistance to oppression. We cannot categorically deny people the right to resist violence, as resistance is sometimes the only response left. When human beings are devalued and their oppression is enforced by a higher authority, they are left with one identity -- one of Ironically, the violence of the oppressed is widely seen as "unreasonable," while state violence is accepted and justified. What Protest Looks Like: Natasha Lennard & Nicholas Mirzoeff According to Nicholas Mirzoeff, defining violence as a personal choice hides systemic, structural violence, such as poverty and racism. It legitimates the state in its use of violence and casts all other perpetrators as traitors to the state. The term "violence" itself signifies moral and political failings by the people. The conversation then moves to the power of images in inciting protest. Images have a fleeting nature, and thus it is the resultant collective action, carried out in the name of creating new politics of appearance, that can affect change. Who is "Evil" & Who is the Victim: Brad Evans & Simona Forti This interview addresses the absolutism behind the good-evil dichotomy. In casting one party as "evil" and another as the "victim," we gain a moral high ground but not much else. It is a superficial designation that lacks nuance. Over the years, the identity of victim has gained respect, and has even become subject to competition, i.e., Who is the most victimized? This lacks nuance, and can be a form of absolving oneself from the possibility of being a perpetrator of violence and oppression. It is important to think beyond the labels of good and evil, as everyone is responsible for their actions, whether they are victims of violence or not. Art in a Time of Atrocity: Brad Evans & Bracha L. Ettinger Bracha L. Ettinger discusses the critical role of art in addressing violence, asserting that art "adds an ethical quality to the act of witnessing." For Ettinger, art is more than aesthetics and technique; it is a chance for viewers to face violence, to feel emotion around violence. As those who bore witness to violent events first-hand disappear, art can convey a piece of their stories for them; it "invents a memory for the future," making that which is not usually seen intimately visible. The subject matter is more than just a representation. It is a passageway to the viewer and hopefully, it incites action against

Review

"In their introduction to this serious and highly ethical resource, editors Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard see themselves charting the legacies of war and suffering, challenging abuses of power in all their oppressive forms, and mustering sustained intellectual engagement to counter violence."—Spirituality & Practice Book Review
"A timely, eloquent series of interviews that interrogate the correlation of violence with gender discrimination, white intolerance, unilateral state power, politics, art and climate change."—Shelley Walia, Frontline

Promotional

--Galleys available--National print, television, and radio publicity campaign--Social media outreach, including giveaways; editor Lennard active on Twitter (~18,000 followers). City Lights has 42,000 followers on Facebook and 127,000 Twitter followers--Cross promotion with the author's website: /

Long Description

Through a series of penetrating conversations originally published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard talk with a wide range of cutting edge thinkers--including Oliver Stone, Simon Critchley, and Elaine Scarry --to explore the problem of violence in everyday life, politics, culture, media, language, memory, and the environment. "To bring out the best of us," writes Evans, "we have to confront the worst of what humans are capable of doing to one another. In short, there is a need to confront the intolerable realities of violence in this world." These lively, in-depth exchanges among historians, theorists, and artists offer a timely and bracing look at how the increasing expression and acceptance of violence--in all strata of society--has become a defining feature of our 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 " . . . 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 "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 Praise for Brad Evans: "One of the brightest critical minds of his generation"-- Henry A. Giroux "The George Clooney of philosophy."-- Russell Brand "Brad Evans has quickly emerged as one of the leading thinkers on violence in the contemporary world . . . he challenges us to stand up and speak out, and to courageously strive for a more emancipatory and inclusive world."-- Adrian Parr , author of The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics

Review Quote

"In their introduction to this serious and highly ethical resource, editors Brad Evans and Natasha Lennard see themselves charting the legacies of war and suffering, challenging abuses of power in all their oppressive forms, and mustering sustained intellectual engagement to counter violence."--Spirituality & Practice Book Review "A timely, eloquent series of interviews that interrogate the correlation of violence with gender discrimination, white intolerance, unilateral state power, politics, art and climate change."--Shelley Walia, Frontline

Excerpt from Book

FOURTEEN Violence: The Directors Eye Movies can point out violence. But how effective can they can be? Brad Evans interviews Oliver Stone January 23, 2017 Brad Evans: Each of your films deals in different ways with the relationships between power, war and oppression. What role do you think filmmakers have when confronting the problems of violence and injustice in the world today? Oliver Stone: Platoon was made almost 20 years after that war and it was a small slice of an infantry unit in a war that was misunderstood by most Americans. It was truly an ugly slice and people recognized that. Do you realize how much information actually got out about that war when it was in progress? Very little! We still have the same issues. As Chris Hedges points out, we still have the same issues; so few reporters really see the war. They get "embedded" by the US military, and they spend their time getting "briefed" from the U.S. point of view, rarely see real action, and they miss the big picture. I didn''t see one press person in the field my entire time in combat units in Vietnam, which stretched over approximately thirteen of my fifteen months. They would go out to the elite units such as the Marines, as they''re always looking for publicity, or the First Cavalry Division, a novel concept at the time, but the "grunt units" are not glamorous. The same is true essentially of filmmakers, because they also get seduced by a fabricated reality put to them by the Pentagon. The current Syrian conflict is the latest example of this behavior. American TV is terribly good at removing the ugliest side of war. You get a much more direct picture on France 24 or RT (Russian television). We in the U.S. cut out the body bags or coffins coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan because its bad publicity for the war effort. As a result, Americans are sanitized to the concept of death in a Disney War. And that''s why I believe we have the ability to have wars that continue for fifteen years without coming face to face with them. This is where film has a role--but a small one. After all, Platoon can come out 20 years afterwards, so can Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth, the three films I made. But few Americans to this day still realize that 3.8 million Vietnamese, according to McNamara, were killed. That''s more than half of Jews killed in World War II and yet every school kid in America knows that! I''d like to ask you about your personal relationship and experience of violence. In particular, how you''re first hand encounters with war and injustice shaped and continues to inform your own director''s eye? Occasionally, I did see and engage with the enemy. I spent quite a bit of time in the bush, and I saw a lot of fuck ups. A lot of "friendly fire," that is a lot of getting killed by your own men often in close combat when you don''t know who is killing who or where the explosions are coming from. We tend in the U.S. military to overreact to incoming fire. We send out a ton of artillery and sometimes planes with bombs for what often is a simple ambush that can be handled without overreaction. Sort of like George Bush in 2001 who thinks the attack on the World Trade Center is the start of World War III and calls for a war on the world. Us against them. War on terror, etc. So we go into this overreaction. It''s in our makeup. I''d argue that it goes back to our childhood. Those who grew up after the War in the shadow of the bomb were born into a paranoid society that wasn''t necessarily nurturing. We''re set up in schools by an Anglo Saxon mentality for a fierce competition, wherein to succeed you must assert yourself and win. Which often means the other person has to lose and lose badly. Otherwise you''re weak. The films of John Wayne, or, for that matter, so-called thoughtful films like Shane and High Noon show that even a good man has to carry a gun and be able to protect the weak--and in the end of course he has to use that gun. You can''t have a gun in an American movie and see it not used. I don''t think our movies, with few exceptions, have veered from that equation. I''ve made several anti-war movies, but look at our country now. It''s even more militaristic than before. When the kids saw Platoon they joined up; they didn''t go and see Born so much because their hero, Tom Cruise (from Top Gun), was castrated halfway through the film. Suffering a paralyzed life is much harder for the young people to understand. I think young people want to see excitement and most of them don''t care about the moral consequences. It''s in our national DNA. From Salvador onto Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, there is a clear dimension to your work that addresses head on the intimate nature of violence and the ongoing trauma of all too human suffering. What has been the most difficult scene you have filmed in this regard? In Born on the Fourth of July, we concentrated on a moment in which Tom Cruise is shot near fatally in the lung area. He''d already been wounded in the heel and was continuing to fire on his knees, partly out of a sense of guilt from an earlier encounter when he believed he''d killed his own man in a combat situation. In this case, as he stays up, firing without purpose, we built the music and the montage to that one bullet that cracks into his spine and severs his spinal cord. Basically it''s one bullet that does this--just one bullet that changes your life. There is also a very powerful scene in Heaven & Earth where Tommy Lee Jones, a war veteran failing to make a living by selling arms back in the U.S., has married a Vietnamese woman who has experienced every form of warfare up to this point. Now back in San Diego, frustrated with his life, he almost kills her. He points his shotgun at her head and all her past life passes before her. We have the faces and the shotgun, the shells, the ammunition box and its descriptions all passing before us with the music. In the end, he pauses long enough not to kill her. He puts the shotgun away and momentarily we see them reconcile with a loving scene where she forgives him ("different skin, same suffering"). But in the end he kills himself, as many veterans are doing. So we really dig into the power of violence and what one bullet can do. We show clearly that this happens in U.S. domestic life; that you don''t have to go to Vietnam to see the power of the bullet. In fact, kids are being cut down left and right in our cities. We really are in a war situation, but we are not facing up to it. Movies can point out this violence. But how effective they can be, I have my doubts. The abuse of power as we all know comes in many different forms. Turning to your latest film release Snowden, what was it about this storyline in particular that compelled you? And how do you see it in relation to your broader critique of the role of the United States? I think the 2013 revelations were not very clear to many people. It was so technical. But it doesn''t really register and we tried with the movie to get really into what they were doing by showing the NSA, the dialogue, the maps, the way they think, to try and show some of that world. The only way we could find out about it was to talk to Snowden. And he was the guy who in nine different visits gave us some remarkable insight into these new systems with tremendous power--and why surveillance isn''t about terrorism, which can be dealt with through selected targeting, but really about a desire to dominate the world with social and economic control in all countries. This is not just about Internet surveillance. It is about drone warfare and cyber warfare. This is about global satellite systems and the most intimate forms of knowledge from our personal details to the operations of all leading multinational corporations. And of course interfering in nation-states, including conducting digitalized coup d''

Description for Sales People

There are a number of anthologies on violence, but none exist as presented in this conversational interview format, which provides a meaningful and sophisticated introduction into the most cutting-edge thinking on the problem of violence in the contemporary world. The market for this book includes readers of the New York Times , as half of these conversations were first published in their online philosophy column "The Stone." The other half come from the Los Angeles Review of Books . The issue of violence cuts across many disciplines of study and inquiry, and this book connects them through the eclectic range of thinkers, filmmakers, artists, and theorists with whom Evans and Lennard speak. Brad Evans has gained more public recognition in the U.S. given his editorial work on the New York Times's "The Stone." Natasha Lennard's work is well-known as she regularly contributes to Esquire , The Intercept , The Nation , and the New York Times .

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