Forgetting Lot's Wife : On Destructive Spectatorship / Martin Harries.
Harries, Martin, author.
2009
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Title Forgetting Lot's Wife : On Destructive Spectatorship / Martin Harries.
Author Harries, Martin, author.
ISBN 9780823237647
DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823237647
Published New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2009]
Copyright ©2009
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (192 p.) : 22 Black & White and color illustrations
Other Standard Identifiers 10.1515/9780823237647 doi
Dewey Decimal Classification 155.9/35
Summary Can looking at disaster and mass death destroy us? Forgetting Lot's Wife provides a theory and a fragmentary history of destructive spectatorship in the twentieth century. Its subject is the notion that the sight of historical catastrophe can destroy the spectator. The fragments of this history all lead back to the story of Lot's wife: looking back at the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, she turns into a pillar of salt. This biblical story of punishment and transformation, a nexus of sexuality, sight, and cities, becomes the template for the modern fear that looking back at disaster might petrify the spectator. Although rarely articulated directly,this idea remains powerful in our culture. This book traces some of its aesthetic, theoretical, and ethical consequences. Harries traces the figure of Lot's wife across media. In extended engagements with examples from twentieth-century theater, film, and painting, he focuses on the theatrical theory of Antonin Artaud, a series of American films, and paintings by Anselm Kiefer. These examples all return to the story of Lot's wife as a way to think about modern predicaments of the spectator. On the one hand, the sometimes veiled figure of Lot's wife allows these artists to picture the desire to destroy the spectator; on the other, she stands as a sign of the potential danger to the spectator. These works, that is, enact critiques of the very desire that inspires them.The book closes with an extended meditation on September 11, criticizing the notion that we should have been destroyed by witnessing the events of that day.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
In Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
Fordham University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780823227334
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Frontmatter
Contents
List of Figures
List of Plates
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One Artaud, Spectatorship, and Catastrophe
Chapter Two Hollywood Sodom
Chapter Three Anselm Kiefer's Lot's Wife: Perspective and the Place of the Spectator
Coda Lot's Wife on September 11, 2001; or, Against Figuration
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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