Violence and Visibility in Modern History

by Martschukat, Jürgen; Niedermeier, Silvan

• ISBN13: 9781137378682
• ISBN10: 1137378689
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-12-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature is only the latest work to argue that the modern world has become a safer, less violent, and more humane place. However, as this expansive volume demonstrates, neither the amount of violence nor its intensity has undergone significant change since the Enlightenment - but what has changed is that the forms and visibility of violent acts have been radically transformed. Despite the fact that for over two centuries a morally critical stance towards violence has been invoked as a defining feature of enlightened civilization, violence has continued to be an inherent characteristic of modern and so-called civilized societies. By exploring the complex relationships among these "civilized" aspirations, the reality of violence, and its depiction, the contributions gathered here help to reshape the debate over violence in modern societies and undermine teleological and reassuring narratives of progress.

Author Biography

Juergen Martschukat is Professor at the University of Erfurt, Germany.

Silvan Niedermeier is Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt, Germany.

Table of Contents

1. Violence and Visibility: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives; Jürgen Martschukat and Silvan Niedermeier
2. Torture By Any Other Name: Prelude to Guantanamo; Colin Dayan
PART I: VISIBILITIES OF CRIME, POLICING, AND PUNISHMENT
3. The Visibility of Torture in Collections of 19th Century Case Studies; Thomas Weitin
4. Changing Representations of Scandalous Murders in the United States; Bruce Dorsey
5. The Power of Indifference: Violence, Visibility, and Invisibility in the New York City Race Riot of 1900; Martha Hodes
6. Violence, Visibility, and the Investigation of Torture in the American South, 1940-1955; Silvan Niedermeier
7. The "Vicarious Play" of Lynching Melodramas: Cinema and Mob Violence in the United States, 1895-1905; Amy Louise Wood
8. Picturing Exclusion: Race, Honor, and Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany before the Second World War; Michael Wildt
PART II: VISIBILITIES OF WARFARE
9. Life and Death in Peep Boxes: Bringing the Civil War to the American Home; Annette Jael Lehmann 10. Images of Violence in Wehrmacht Soldiers' Private Photo Albums; Petra Bopp
11. Making Photographs Historic: The Use of Historical Black-And-White Stills in NBC's Fictional Miniseries Holocaust; Jan Taubitz
12. Shiny Happy Warfare?: New York Victory Parades and the (In)Visibility of Violence; Sebastian Job
13. Violence and Historical Reenactment: From the American Civil War to the Moore's Ford Lynching; Dora Apel