Frames of war
Subtitle: when is life grievable?
By: Judith Butler
Edition: Pbk. ed.
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2010
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 193
ISBN-13: 9781844676262
Subjects: Kriegsverbrechen; Social aspects; Folter; Violence; Gewaltmonopol; Mass media and public opinion; Political violence; Political aspects; Gewaltkriminalität; Right and left (Political science)
Description: "Frames of War begins where Butler's Precarious Lives left off: on the idea that we cannot grieve for those lost lives that we never saw as lives to begin with. In this age of CNN-mediated war, the lives of those wretched populations of the earth -- the refugees; the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture; the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement -- are always presented to us as already irretrievable and thereby already lost. We may shake our heads at their wretchedness but then we sacrifice them nonetheless, for they are already forgone. By analyzing the different frames through which we experience war, Butler calls for a reorientation of the Left toward the precarity of those lives. Only by recognizing those lives as precarious lives -- lives that are not yet lost but are ever fragile and in need of protection -- might the Left stand in unity against the violence perpetrated through arbitrary state power. -- Publisher description.
Notes: Originally published: 2009.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Precarious Life, Grievable Life; title: - 1. Survivability, Vulnerability, Affect; title: - 2. Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag; title: - 3. Sexual Politics, Torture, and Secular Time; title: - 4. Non-Thinking in the Name of the Normative; title: - 5. The Claim of Non-Violence.