Regarding the Pain of Others

Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. 'A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering' The New York Times What is the purpose of images of pain and suffering? Can there be any real justification for the creation, and consumption, of such images? In this seminal volume, Susan Sontag examines the uses and meanings of images, from inspiring dissent to fostering violence to creating apathy. And through this lens she considers the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience. 'A far-reaching set of ruminations [...] on what it means to be alive and alert in the twenty-first century' Independent 'Sontag is on top form: devastating' Los Angeles Times 'Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive' Metro

Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. 'A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering' The New York Times What is the purpose of images of pain and suffering? Can there be any real justification for the creation, and consumption, of such images? In this seminal volume, Susan Sontag examines the uses and meanings of images, from inspiring dissent to fostering violence to creating apathy. And through this lens she considers the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience. 'A far-reaching set of ruminations [...] on what it means to be alive and alert in the twenty-first century' Independent 'Sontag is on top form: devastating' Los Angeles Times 'Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive' Metro

A brilliant, clear-eyed consideration of the visual representation of violence in our culture--its ubiquity, meanings, and effects. Considered one of the greatest critics of her generation, Susan Sontag followed up her monumental On Photography with an extended study of human violence, reflecting on a question first posed by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas : How in your opinion are we to prevent war? "For a long time some people believed that if the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war." One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. But are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the suffering of others far away? First published more than twenty years after her now-classic book On Photography , which changed how we understand the very condition of being modern, Regarding the Pain of Others challenges our thinking not only about the uses and means of images, but about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

A brilliant, clear-eyed consideration of the visual representation of violence in our culture--its ubiquity, meanings, and effects. Considered one of the greatest critics of her generation, Susan Sontag followed up her monumental On Photography with an extended study of human violence, reflecting on a question first posed by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas : How in your opinion are we to prevent war? "For a long time some people believed that if the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war." One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. But are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the suffering of others far away? First published more than twenty years after her now-classic book On Photography , which changed how we understand the very condition of being modern, Regarding the Pain of Others challenges our thinking not only about the uses and means of images, but about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.