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E-book
Author Mitchell, W. J. T. (William John Thomas), 1942- author.

Title Cloning terror : the war of images, 9/11 to the present / W.J.T. Mitchell
Published Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, [2011]
©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xix, 209 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color)
Contents Preface: For a war on error -- War is over (if you want it) -- Cloning terror -- Clonophobia -- Autoimmunity: picturing terror -- The unspeakable and the unimaginable -- Biopictures -- The Abu Ghraib archive -- Documentary knowledge and image life -- State of the union, or Jesus comes to Abu Ghraib -- Conclusion: A poetics of the historical image
Summary "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"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject War on Terrorism, 2001-2009 -- Art and the war
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
HISTORY.
War on Terrorism (2001-2009) in mass media
Oral communication -- Political aspects
Oral communication -- Psychological aspects
Psychological aspects
Visual communication -- Political aspects
Visual communication -- Psychological aspects
Genre/Form Art
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780226532615
0226532615
0226532593
9780226532592