Wayne State UP, 1992. Simon Richter re-establishes the history of the Laocoon statue and demonstrates how its own discovery and rediscovery, placement and displacement, damage and rebuilding have intensified its interest as a focus of German aesthetic criticism. He traces classical, medieval, and Renaissance accounts of the statue and also chronicles its restoration, which changed the gesture of Laocoon's right arm from extended to bent. Various meditations on authenticity may be derived from this historical inquiry.
Representation depends on resistance.
Though pain and the soul's efforts to conceal pain are violently opposed, it is only in their mutual tension that representation takes place. I must be dreaming. This particular argument is very well laid out and an intriguing read. Richter's take on Lessing and euphemism is less persuasive. Richter's continual return to a meditation on the statue of Laocoon itself seems to orient criticism in men's reaction to objects deliberately.