1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910962640203321

Autore

Mitchell W. J. T (William John Thomas), <1942->

Titolo

Cloning terror : the war of images, 9/11 to the present / / W.J.T. Mitchell

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago ; ; London, : University of Chicago Press, 2010

ISBN

9786613058430

9781283058438

128305843X

9780226532615

0226532615

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (240 p.)

Disciplina

973.931

Soggetti

War on Terrorism, 2001-2009

War on Terrorism, 2001-2009, in mass media

War on Terrorism, 2001-2009 - Psychological aspects

Visual communication - Psychological aspects

Visual communication - Political aspects

Oral communication - Psychological aspects

Oral communication - Political aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface. For a War on Error -- 1. War Is Over (If You Want It) -- 2. Cloning Terror -- 3. Clonophobia -- 4. Autoimmunity Picturing Terror -- 5. The Unspeakable and the Unimaginable -- 6. Biopictures -- 7. The Abu Ghraib Archive -- 8. Documentary Knowledge and Image Life -- 9. State of the Union, or Jesus Comes to Abu Ghraib -- Conclusion. A Poetics of the Historical Image -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

The phrase "War on Terror" has quietly been retired from official usage, but it persists in the American psyche, and our understanding of it is hardly complete. Nor will it be, W. J. T Mitchell argues, without a grasp of the images that it spawned, and that spawned it. Exploring the role of verbal and visual images in the War on Terror, Mitchell finds a



conflict whose shaky metaphoric and imaginary conception has created its own reality. At the same time, Mitchell locates in the concept of clones and cloning an anxiety about new forms of image-making that has amplified the political effects of the War on Terror. Cloning and terror, he argues, share an uncanny structural resemblance, shuttling back and forth between imaginary and real, metaphoric and literal manifestations. In Mitchell's startling analysis, cloning terror emerges as the inevitable metaphor for the way in which the War on Terror has not only helped recruit more fighters to the jihadist cause but undermined the American constitution with "faith-based" foreign and domestic policies. Bringing together the hooded prisoners of Abu Ghraib with the cloned stormtroopers of the Star Wars saga, Mitchell draws attention to the figures of faceless anonymity that stalk the ever-shifting and unlocatable "fronts" of the War on Terror. A striking new investigation of the role of images from our foremost scholar of iconology, Cloning Terror will expand our understanding of the visual legacy of a new kind of war and reframe our understanding of contemporary biopower and biopolitics.