Frames of war: when is life grievable? (invited review essay)

Abstract

Sometimes when faced with photographs and videos of terrible war scenes, we are left feeling nothing. Though increasingly exposed to images of the horrors of conflict, we often remain immune, unable to really engage with the terror being depicted in the pictures we see. It is true that certain images and stories do manage to slip through the shield of numbness and affect people deeply, like the black and white image of a child burned by napalm during the Vietnam war that circulated through the United States, or the tale of a Christmas truce between soldiers in the trenches during World War I. In these special, one-off instances, the inescapable humanity of the enemy, the 'other' of war, comes sharply into focus. Butler's latest book is about how this can happen, and what it might lead to.