Description: In 1945, French political prisoners returning from the concentration camps of Germany coined the phrase 'the concentrationary universe' to describe the camps as a terrible political experiment in the destruction of the human. This book shows how the unacknowledged legacy of a totalitarian mentality has seeped into the deepest recesses of everyday popular culture. It asks if the concentrationary now infests our cultural imaginary, normalizing what was once considered horrific and exceptional by transforming into entertainment violations of human life. Drawing on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and the analyses of violence by Agamben, Virilio, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, it also offers close readings of films by Cavani and Haneke that identify and critically expose such an imaginary and, hence, contest its lingering force.
Brief description: Griselda Pollock is Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and, since 2001, Director, Centre CATH (Cultural Analysis, Theory & History) at the University of Leeds, UK. Known for her critical interventions in feminist, social, Jewish and postcolonial studies in art's histories, her work ranges from nineteenth and twentieth century fields to that of contemporary art and cinema, museum studies and cultural theory. Her publications include Old Mistresses, Vision and Difference, Avant-Garde Gambits, Generations and Geographies, and Differencing the Canon.