"Lucid, expansive, and necessarily unsparing in its critique of intellectual orthodoxies, Images of War is an urgently important book.  Its argument is creatively theorized but deeply accountable to the realities of militarized violence, ethnonationalism, and authoritarianism.  Confronted with these phenomena and all their attendant harms, Uroš Čvoro and Kit Messham-Muir do more than simply insist, as many scholars have, that we need new ways of thinking about the world.  By patiently dismantling the theoretical paradigms that have come to dominate media and cultural studies, Čvoro and Messham-Muir clear space for a radical rethinking of what art can accomplish. 

 

While most reflections on war in the contemporary moment begin with the attacks of September 11, 2001, Čvoro and Messham-Muir extend their historical framework back to 1989.  In so doing, they demonstrate that a narrow focus on 9/11 has generated a reactionary form of criticism destined to endlessly rehash itself.  By looking further into the past, they uncover the interlocking mechanisms of nationalism, violence, affect politics, and mediation that shape our present and threaten to dictate our collective future.  Images of War refuses both platitudes and despair in response to that vision, and instead places its fragile hope in militant humanism and art as a political pedagogy of survival." 

 

Dr Rebecca A. Adelman
Professor and Chair, Department of Media and
Communication Studies, University of Maryland Baltimore County