Unwatchable

NICHOLAS BAER is a collegiate assistant professor in the humanities and Harper-Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago in Illinois. He is the coeditor of the award-winning The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933.  MAGGIE HENNEFELD is an assistant professor of cultural studies and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. She is the author of Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.  LAURA HORAK is an associate professor of film studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of the award-winning Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908–1934 (Rutgers University Press).  GUNNAR IVERSEN is a professor of film studies at Carleton University. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of more than twenty books.

"By posing a seemingly modest question-what visual experiences in our media-saturated world are 'unwatchable?'-the editors of this remarkable volume have elicited an astonishing range of intensely felt responses. They reveal the most potent anxieties of our troubled times, forcing us to attend to what we cannot bear to witness directly." - Martin Jay (author of Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought) "This thoughtfully curated anthology of short essays comes at a classical aesthetic problem with a fresh sense of historical urgency and from a number of truly new, often surprising directions. Radically extending the conceptual reach of its title, Unwatchable offers readers real traction on core questions in media and cultural studies surrounding taste, identity, and embodied experience as it navigates deftly across the dizzying landscape of contemporary spectatorship." - Sianne Ngai (author of Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting) "A compelling foray into the bio- and necropolitics of spectacle, suffering, and violence. The short pieces in this weighty collection linger uncomfortably, highlighting the incommensurability of the unwatchable and the unthinkable." - Jasbir K. Puar (author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times) "While many edited anthologies boast interdisciplinarity and intermediality, Unwatchable stands out for the astounding reach of the media and discourses marshalled under its theme. Its implications are manifold, evidence that 'unwatchable' is more than just an aesthetic category. Unwatchable’s editors suggest that the currently unobservable, whether expressly repudiated or involuntarily rendered invisible, will surely linger and haunt the public imagination for years-if not generations-to come." (Film Quarterly) New Books Network: New Books in Popular Culture -- New Books in film podcast interview withNicholas Baer, Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, and Gunnar Iversen (New Books Network - New Books in Film) "Confronting the Unwatchable," by Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Baerhttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/confronting-the-unwatchable/#! (Los Angeles Review of Books) "A substantial collection of essays, bristling with anxiety about the social impact of the kind of mediations broadcasting the news requires of us daily." (Times Literary Supplement) "The tone of the writing is refreshing-sometimes experimental and at others painfully reflective. Readers embark on deeply personal and highly politicised journeys with contributors, recalling harrowing moments from cinematic, televisual, world, and personal history." (Moveable Type) "Unwatchable is a powerful, potent collection because of its mission to crack our fingers apart just a little bit wider to see more of what we're averse to. Look for this book." (Jump Cut) "The anthology is an impressive collection of essays written by over fifty scholars and artists working on issues in film and media studies from a variety of disciplines and professional (as well as personal) perspectives, each of whom attempts to struggle with sharing what it means for something to be 'unwatchable' for them. Researchers on related issues in film, media, gender, politics, and philosophy broadly construed will find much that is both new and old to consider anew and to reconsider, while those new to such debates may find another space within which to theorize." (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism) "This anthology does nothing less than challenge us to grapple with the criteria and ramifications of the unwatchable. It does not offer any one-dimensional or easily digestible answers to the complex questions raised in individual contributions. Though its richness and variety, it instead makes possible a deeper understanding of the concept of the unwatchable, which has become a crucial category across global media and politics." (MEDIENwissenschaft: Rezensionen) "A socially urgent and intellectually galvanizing book. Unwatchable opens up a vital critical space for sharing the burden of navigating the difficult, often painful terrain of the twenty-first century visual regime. Highly readable, and productively challenging, it is a book that will inform our discussions of the politics of watching (and not watching) for a long time to come." (Journal of Cinema and Media Studies) "This is a volume edited by the discipline’s top scholars and featuring some of our most brilliant theorists. Film scholars will doubtless be citing the essays in this volume for a long time to come. I know I will. What is likely to impress students, and what this collection gifts so gorgeously, is its demonstration of the way theory and film alike can crack open the most pressing issues of our day and offer moral support and ethical guidance for thinking through a life lived as citizen and spectator." (The Communication Review) "This book will find its greatest connections in studies of both the ethics and aesthetics of visual culture at its fringes." (Communication Booknotes Quarterly) "Carefully edited to allow multiple voices and experiences to be in dialogue and sometimes challenge each other, Unwatchable shows how productive the unwatchable is as a moral and aesthetic category and also reveals that when it comes to these images, our watch has just begun." - Aurore Spiers (Discourse)

• ContentsIntroduction: Envisioning the UnwatchablePart I: Violence and TestimonyTheorizing the Unwatchable1. W. J. T. Mitchell, Unwatchable2. Boris Groys, The Gaze from Within3. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Unwatchable and the Unwatchable4. Alenka Zupančič, Melting Into Visibility5. Meghan Sutherland, Pro FormaSpectacles of Destruction6. Jonathan Crary, Terminal Radiance7. Poulomi Saha, Unwatched/Unmanned: Drone Strikes and the Aesthetics of the Unseen8. Alex Bush, Breakaway9. Meir Wigoder, The Watchability of the Unwatchable: Television Disaster CoverageBearing Witness10. Peter Geimer, The Incommensurable11. Leshu Torchin, Not Seeing is Believing: The Unwatchable in Advocacy12. Frances Guerin, Even If She Had Been a Criminal: A Past Unwatched13. Federico Windhausen, Deframing Evidence: A Transmission from Los ingrÁvidos14. Emily Regan Wills, Alan Kurdi’s Body on the ShoreVisual Regimes of Racial Violence15. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Held Helpless in the Breach: On American History X16. Jared Sexton, The Flash of History: On the Unwatchable in Get Out17. Alexandra Juhasz, Nothing is Unwatchable for All18. Michael Boyce Gillespie, Empathy. Complicity.Spectacularization and Resistance19. Alok Vaid-Menon, Entertainment Value20. Alec Butler, Holocausts, Hallowe’en, and Headdresses21. Danielle Peers, Unwitnessable: Outrageous Ableist Impersonations and Unwitnessed Everyday ViolencePart II:  Histories and GenresThe Tradition of Provocateurs22. AsbjØrn GrØnstad, The Two Unwatchables23. Akira Lippit, Real Horrorshow24. Mauro Resmini, Asymmetries of Desire: SalÒ, or the 120 Days of Sodom25. Mattias Frey, Unstomachable: IrrÉversible and the Extreme Cinema TraditionEnduring the Avant-Garde26. Christophe Wall-Romana, Unwatchability by Choice: Isou’s Venom and Eternity27. Kenneth Berger, The Refusal of Spectacle: Debord’s Howls for Sade28. J. Hoberman, Warhol’s Empire: Unwatched and Unwatchable29. NoËl Carroll, Warhol's Empire30. Erika Balsom, Watching Paint DryVisceral Responses to Horror31. Vivian Sobchack, “Peekaboo”: Thoughts on (Maybe Not) Seeing Two Horror Films32. B. Ruby Rich, Why I Cannot Watch33. Genevieve Yue, ApotropesPornography and the Question of Pleasure34. Susie Bright, I Am Curious (Butterball)35. Bill Nichols, At the Threshold to the VoidArchives and the Disintegrating Image36. Elif Rongen-KaynakÇi, Restoring Blood Money37. Jan Olsson, Turning Garbo Watchable: From Swedish Bread Bun to Hollywood Goddess38. Philipp Stiasny and Bennet Togler, Twilight of the DeadPart III: Spectators and ObjectsPassionate Aversions39. Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Sad!”: Why I Won’t Watch Antichrist40. Nathan Lee, Transforming Nihilism41. Julian Hanich, Oh, Inventiveness! Oh, Imaginativeness! Precious Cinema and Its Discontents: A Rant42. Jeffrey Sconce, The Biopic is an Affront to the CinemaTedious Whiteness43. Jack Halberstam, White Men Behaving Sadly44. Brandy Monk-Payton, “You is Kind, You is Smart, You is Important” or, Why I Can't Watch The Help45. Mel Y. Chen, Two Tables and a Ladder: WCGW?Reality Trumpism46. Lynne Joyrich, TV Trumps47. Abigail De Kosnik, The Once and Future Hillary: Why I Won't Watch Any Fictionalizations of the 2016 ElectionPedagogy and Campus Politics48. RaÚl PÉrez, Why We Can’t Take a Joke49. Jennifer Malkowski, The Bridge and Unteachable Films50. Katariina KyrÖlÄ, Squirming in the Classroom: Fat Girl and the Ethical Value of Extreme DiscomfortThe Triggered Spectator51. E. Ann Kaplan, What is an “Unwatchable” Film? (With Reference to Amour and Still Alice)52. Barbara Hammer, Watch at Your Own Peril53. Samuel England, Sects, Fries, and Videotape54. Rebecca Schneider, Off WatchAcknowledgmentsFilmographyBibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex