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Regarding the Pain of Others
Brief Description
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...
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Regarding the Pain of Others
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Description
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.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781250374721
Publisher: St Martin's Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 15 July 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: St Martin's Press
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 11.0mm
Width: 143.0mm
Height: 207.0mm
Weight: 127g
Pages: 144
About the Author
Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including the groundbreaking collection of essays Against Interpretation, and of four novels, including In America, which won the National Book Award.
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