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    Unwatchable

    Nicholas Baer (Edited by), Maggie Hennefeld (Edited by), Laura Horak (Edited by), Gunnar Iversen (Edited by), Erika Balsom (Contributions by), Kenneth Berger (Contributions by), Susie Bright (Contributions by), Alex Bush (Contributions by), Alec Butler (Contributions by), Noel Carroll (Contributions by), Mel Chen (Contributions by), Jonathan Crary (Contributions by), Abigail De Kosnik (Contributions by), Samuel England (Contributions by), Mattias Frey (Contributions by), Peter Geimer (Contributions by), Michael Boyce Gillespie (Contributions by), Asbjørn Grønstad (Contributions by), Boris Groys (Contributions by), Frances Guerin (Contributions by), Jack Halberstam (Contributions by), Barbara Hammer (Contributions by), Julian Hanich (Contributions by), Stefano Harney (Contributions by), J. Hoberman (Contributions by), Lynne Joyrich (Contributions by), Alexandra Juhasz (Contributions by), E. Ann Kaplan (Contributions by), Katariina Kyrölä (Contributions by), Nathan Lee (Contributions by), Akira Lippit (Contributions by), Jennifer Malkowski (Contributions by), W.J.T. Mitchell (Contributions by), Brandy Monk-Payton (Contributions by), Fred Moten (Contributions by), Bill Nichols (Contributions by), Jan Olsson (Contributions by), Danielle Peers (Contributions by), Raul Perez (Contributions by), Mauro Resmini (Contributions by), B. Ruby Rich (Contributions by), Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (Contributions by), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Contributions by), Rebecca Schneider (Contributions by), Jeffrey Sconce (Contributions by), Jared Sexton (Contributions by), Philipp Stiasny (Contributions by), Meghan Sutherland (Contributions by), Bennet Togler (Contributions by), Leshu Torchin (Contributions by), Alok Vaid-Menon (Contributions by), Christophe Wall-Romana (Contributions by), Meir Wigoder (Contributions by), Emily Wills (Contributions by), Federico Windhausen (Contributions by), Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (Contributions by), Genevieve Yue (Contributions by), Alenka Zupancic (Contributions by), Poulomi Saha (Contributions by), Vivian Sobchack (Contributions by)

    9780813599595

    Hardback, published 14 January 2019

    412 pages, 51 images
    22.9 x 15.2 x 3.3 cm, 0.49 kg

    "By posing a seemingly modest question-what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'-the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly."
    - Martin Jay (author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought)
    "This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship."
    - Sianne Ngai (author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting)
    "A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable."
    - Jasbir K. Puar (author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times)

    "While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years-if not generations-to come." 

    (Film Quarterly) (New Books Network - New Books in Film) (Los Angeles Review of Books)
    "A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily."
    (Times Literary Supplement)
    "The tone of the writing is refreshing-sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history."
    (Moveable Type)
    "Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book."
    (Jump Cut)
    "The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize."
    (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism)
    "This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics."
    (MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen)
    "A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come."
    (Journal of Cinema and Media Studies)
    "This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator."
    (The Communication Review)
    "This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes."
    (Communication Booknotes Quarterly)
    "Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun."
    - Aurore Spiers (Discourse)

    We all have images that we find unwatchable, whether for ethical, political, or sensory and affective reasons. From news coverage of terror attacks to viral videos of police brutality, and from graphic horror films to transgressive artworks, many of the images in our media culture might strike us as unsuitable for viewing. Yet what does it mean to proclaim something “unwatchable”: disturbing, revolting, poor, tedious, or literally inaccessible?
     
    With over 50 original essays by leading scholars, artists, critics, and curators, this is the first book to trace the “unwatchable” across our contemporary media environment, in which viewers encounter difficult content on various screens and platforms. Appealing to a broad academic and general readership, the volume offers multidisciplinary approaches to the vast array of troubling images that circulate in global visual culture.  

    Contents

    Introduction: Envisioning the Unwatchable

    Part I: Violence and Testimony

    Theorizing the Unwatchable
    1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Unwatchable
    2. Boris Groys, The Gaze from Within
    3. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable
    4. Alenka Zupančič, Melting Into Visibility
    5. Meghan Sutherland, Pro Forma

    Spectacles of Destruction
    6. Jonathan Crary, Terminal Radiance
    7. Poulomi Saha, Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen
    8. Alex Bush, Breakaway
    9. Meir Wigoder, The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster Coverage

    Bearing Witness
    10. Peter Geimer, The Incommensurable
    11. Leshu Torchin, Not Seeing is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy
    12. Frances Guerin, Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched
    13. Federico Windhausen, Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrÁ
    vidos
    14. Emily Regan Wills, Alan Kurdi’
    s Body on the Shore

    Visual Regimes of Racial Violence
    15. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X
    16. Jared Sexton, The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out
    17. Alexandra Juhasz, Nothing is Unwatchable for All
    18. Michael Boyce Gillespie, Empathy. Complicity.

    Spectacularization and Resistance
    19. Alok Vaid-Menon, Entertainment Value
    20. Alec Butler, Holocausts, Hallowe’
    en, and Headdresses
    21. Danielle Peers, Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday Violence

    Part II:  Histories and Genres

    The Tradition of Provocateurs
    22. AsbjØ
    rn GrØ
    nstad, The Two Unwatchables
    23. Akira Lippit, Real Horrorshow
    24. Mauro Resmini, Asymmetries of Desire: SalÒ
    , or the 120 Days of Sodom
    25. Mattias Frey, Unstomachable: IrrÉ
    versible     and the Extreme Cinema Tradition

    Enduring the Avant-Garde
    26. Christophe Wall-Romana, Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’
    s Venom and Eternity
    27. Kenneth Berger, The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’
    s Howls for Sade
    28. J. Hoberman, Warhol’
    s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable
    29. NoË
    l Carroll, Warhol's Empire
    30. Erika Balsom, Watching Paint Dry

    Visceral Responses to Horror
    31. Vivian Sobchack, “
    Peekaboo”
    : Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films
    32. B. Ruby Rich, Why I Cannot Watch
    33. Genevieve Yue, Apotropes

    Pornography and the Question of Pleasure
    34. Susie Bright, I Am Curious (Butterball)
    35. Bill Nichols, At the Threshold to the Void

    Archives and the Disintegrating Image
    36. Elif Rongen-KaynakÇ
    i, Restoring Blood Money
    37. Jan Olsson, Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess
    38. Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler, Twilight of the Dead

    Part III: Spectators and Objects

    Passionate Aversions
    39. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “
    Sad!”
    : Why I Won’
    t Watch Antichrist
    40. Nathan Lee, Transforming Nihilism
    41. Julian Hanich, Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant
    42. Jeffrey Sconce, The Biopic is an Affront to the Cinema

    Tedious Whiteness
    43. Jack Halberstam, White Men Behaving Sadly
    44. Brandy Monk-Payton, “
    You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important”
    or, Why I Can't Watch The Help
    45. Mel Y. Chen, Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW?

    Reality Trumpism
    46. Lynne Joyrich, TV Trumps
    47. Abigail De Kosnik, The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch Any Fictionalizations of the 2016 Election

    Pedagogy and Campus Politics
    48. RaÚ
    l PÉ
    rez, Why We Can’
    t Take a Joke
    49. Jennifer Malkowski, The Bridge and Unteachable Films
    50. Katariina KyrÖ
    lÄ
    , Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme Discomfort

    The Triggered Spectator
    51. E. Ann Kaplan, What is an “
    Unwatchable”
    Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice)
    52. Barbara Hammer, Watch at Your Own Peril
    53. Samuel England, Sects, Fries, and Videotape
    54. Rebecca Schneider, Off Watch

    Acknowledgments
    Filmography
    Bibliography
    Notes on Contributors
    Index
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