The eleven interconnected essays of this book penetrate the dense
historical knots binding terror, power and the aesthetic sublime and
bring the results to bear on the trauma of September 11 and the
subsequent War on Terror. Through rigorous critical studies of major
works of post-1945 and contemporary culture, the book traces
transformations in art and critical theory in the aftermath of Auschwitz
and Hiroshima. Critically engaging with the work of continental
philosophers, Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois
Lyotard and of contemporary artists Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, and Boaz
Arad, the book confronts the shared cultural conditions that made
Auschwitz and Hiroshima possible and offers searching meditations on the
structure and meaning of the traumatic historical 'event'. Ray argues
that globalization cannot be separated from the collective tasks of
working through historical genocide. He provocatively concludes that the
current US-led War on Terror must be grasped as a globalized inability
to mourn.