How can works of the imagination help us to understand good and evil in the modern world? In this new collection of essays, Alex Danchev treats the artist as a crucial moral witness of our troubled ...times, and puts art to work in the service of political and ethical inquiry.
This book offers a sustained demonstration of the way in which works of art can help us to explore the most difficult ethical and political issues of our time: war, terror, extermination, torture and ...abuse. Author blurb:The book combines art and politics in an original way. It uses art of various kinds (paintings, poems, novels, photographs, films) to explore war; it demonstrates how art can do this. It ranges across the wars of the last century, from the Great War to the Global War on Terror. It is alive to the idea of moral life, even amid depravity and destruction. It is written in a distinctive style, which is said to have some affinities with the work of John Berger. It has one foot in scholarship, the other in magic arts.
Bug splat: the art of the drone DANCHEV, ALEX
International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-),
05/2016, Letnik:
92, Številka:
3
Book Review, Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This review article considers a variety of artworks, including stories, poems, plays, photographs and films, to explore what 'drone art' or 'drone aesthetics' can tell us about the politics and ...ethics of drone operations or drone warfare. The article finds that the politics and the ethics are troublesome and troubling; and that the art illuminates some important issues, through the focus on the drone pilot or operator, and, more fundamentally, through the exposure of what has been called an 'empathy gap'. The attention paid to the drone operator is admirable, as far as it goes. It has unquestionably served to demystify drone operations, and in a certain sense to humanize drone warfare. Democracy is founded upon visibility. To see the drone, it will be necessary to capture it, and contemplate it, from different points of view.
This review article considers three works by the distinguished documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras: My country, my country (2006); The oath (2010); and the recently released Citizenfour (2014), ...focusing on the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Poitras describes these works as a trilogy about American power after 9/11, but they are also about disobedience and resistance, or the problem of dissent. The article argues for the significance (and the virtue) of Poitras's project, as film maker and troublemaker, and for the necessity of what Solzhenitsyn calls civil valour.
Thoughtlessness: Rumsfeld in Washington DANCHEV, ALEX
International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-),
09/2014, Letnik:
90, Številka:
5
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
This review article considers the case of Donald Rumsfeld and his disastrous tenure as US Secretary of Defense (2001–2006), as recounted by Rumsfeld himself in his memoirs and other writings, and in ...interviews with the celebrated documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, for The unknown known (2014). In all of these works he appears completely unreconstructed; indeed, remarkably self-satisfied. The article reflects on Rumsfeld as operator and courtier, and Morris's pursuit of a man without qualities, with reference to Hannah Arendt's notion of 'the banality of evil'.
The Iraq War and Democratic Politics contains the work of leading scholars concerned with the political implications of the Iraq War and its relationship to and significance for democracy. The book ...shuns simplistic analysis and provides a nuanced and critical overview of this key moment in global politics. Subjects covered include: * the underlying moral and political issues raised by the war * US foreign policy and the Middle East * the fundamental dilemmas and contradictions of democratic intervention * how the war was perceived in the UK, EU and US * the challenges of creating democracy inside Iraq * the influential role of NGOs * the legitimacy of the war within international law * the relationship between democratic government and intelligence.
Alex Danchev is Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include international history, diplomacy, security, and, latterly, culture. Much of his previous work has been biographical. His biography of the philosopher-statesman Oliver Franks (1993) was one of the Observer's 'Books of the Year'. His biography of the military writer Basil Liddell Hart (1998) was listed for the Whitbread Prize for Biography and the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. His unexpurgated edition of the Alanbrooke Diaries (2001, with Daniel Todman) was listed for the W. H. Smith Biography Award. John MacMillan is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Brunel University. Recent publications include Boundaries in Question: New Directions in International Relations (edited with Andrew Linklater), On Liberal Peace (1998), 'The Power of the Pen', Millennium (1998), and 'A Kantian Protest Against the Peculiar Discourse of Liberal Peace' (2001)
'Without exception the articles are worth reading.' - Asian Affairs
'The editors and contributors have produced a useful starting point for an analysis of the key aspects of the most contentious issue of the twenty-first century.'
- Cambridge Journal
Introduction: The Iraq War and Democratic Politics John MacMillan 2. The Global Setting: US Foreign Policy and the Future of the Middle East Richard Falk 3. Bush's War: The Iraq Conflict and American Democracy John Dumbrell 4. The Neo-cons: Neo-conservative Thinking Since the O nset of the Iraq War Dan Plesch 5. The United Kingdom Dan Keohane 6. The European Dimension John Vogler 7. Turkey: Democratic Legitimacy Christopher Brewin 8. 'It seemed the best thing to be up and go': On the Legal Case for Invading Iraq Patrick Thornberry 9. The Transition to Democracy in Iraq: Historical Legacies, Resurgent Identities and Reactionary Tendencies Gareth Stansfield 10. The Democratic Transition in Iraq and the Discovery of its Limitations Glen Rangwala 11. Iraq, Political Reconstruction and Liberal Theory John Horton and Yoke-Lian Lee 12. Afghanistan and Iraq: Failed States, or Democracy on Hold? Iftikhar H. Malik 13. The Iraq Body Count Project: Civil Society and the Democratic Deficit John Sloboda and Hamit Dardagan 14. Story Development, or, Walter Mitty the Undefeated Alex Danchev Index
Our Brothers' Keeper: Moral Witness Danchev, Alex
Alternatives: global, local, political,
08/2015, Letnik:
40, Številka:
3/4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article considers the practice of witness in the world—witness to the world—in particular the character and temper, nature and purpose, significance and resonance of "moral witness," a kind of ...ideal type, as conceived by the philosopher Avishai Margalit It proposes that the artist plays an important role as a moral witness and that the work of art itself performs the same function, even after the fact—the phenomenon of "postwitness." In this context, it identifies an ethics of precision or exactitude and adduces a variety of exemplars, ranging from poetry to photography, including Shot at Dawn (2014), a suite of landscape photographs which are also war photographs and memorial photographs, and acts of moral witness, by Chloe Dewe Mathews.
The angel of history DANCHEV, ALEX
International affairs (London),
03/2014, Letnik:
90, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article explores the way in which art can illuminate war, in particular the Great War. It focuses on Paul Klee's painting, Angelus novus (1920), and the interpretation of that painting by Walter ...Benjamin, who owned it, in his celebrated theses 'On the concept of history' (1940). Benjamin's interpretation was a kind of parable: he called it the angel of history. Some have taken inspiration from that characterization; others have offered striking alternatives, including Kaiser Wilhelm II and even Adolf Hitler. The article traces the evolution of these identifications; it also considers the continuing artistic response, in historical perspective—notably Anselm Kiefer's The angel of history: poppy and memory (1989). It argues that our conception of the war, and of all wars, is profoundly affected by artistic imagination, and re-imagination.
Reviews "Victor Chocquet : ami et collectionneur des impressionistes : Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet" ("Victor Chocquet : friend and collector of the Impressionists : Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet"), ...edited by Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice (Hirmer Verlag, 2015). This is the catalogue of an exhibition held at the Collection Oskar Reinhart in Winterthur (closed June 2015). It centers on Victor Chocquet (1821-91), a customs official and one of the most important private collectors of the 19th century. Revised Publication Abstract
PDF
