TY - BOOK ID - 90627716 TI - Forgetting Lot's wife : on destructive spectatorship PY - 2007 SN - 9780823227334 0823227332 9780823227341 0823227340 0823247384 9786612698743 0823241025 1282698745 0823237648 0823227359 PB - New York : Fordham University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Audiences KW - Influence (Psychology). KW - Memory. KW - Recollection (Psychology). KW - Spectators KW - Suffering. KW - Violence. KW - Psychology. KW - Influence (Psychology) KW - Recollection (Psychology) KW - Recall (Psychology) KW - Memory KW - Recognition (Psychology) KW - Retention (Psychology) KW - Intellect KW - Psychology KW - Thought and thinking KW - Comprehension KW - Executive functions (Neuropsychology) KW - Mnemonics KW - Perseveration (Psychology) KW - Reproduction (Psychology) KW - Persons KW - Audiences, Communication KW - Communication audiences KW - Communication KW - Affliction KW - Masochism KW - Pain KW - Violent behavior KW - Social psychology KW - Conformity KW - Example KW - Persuasion (Psychology) KW - Social aspects UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:90627716 AB - 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. ER -