Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War

By Rosalyn Deutsche

Many on the left lament an apathy or amnesia toward recent acts of war. Particularly during the George W. Bush administration's invasion of Iraq, opposition to war seemed to lack the heat and potency of the 1960s and 1970s, giving the impression that passionate dissent was all but dead.

Through an analysis of three politically engaged works of art, Rosalyn Deutsche argues against this melancholic attitude, confirming the power of contemporary art to criticize subjectivity as well as war. Deutsche selects three videos centered on the deployment of the atomic bomb: Krzysztof Wodiczko's Hiroshima Projection (1999), made after the first Gulf War; Silvia Kolbowski's After Hiroshima mon amour (2005-2008); and Leslie Thornton's Let Me Count the Ways (2004-2008), which followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Each of these works confronts the ethical task of addressing historical disaster, and each explores the intersection of past and present wars. These artworks profoundly contribute to the discourse of war resistance, illuminating the complex dynamics of viewing and interpretation. Deutsche employs feminist and psychoanalytic approaches in her study, questioning both the role of totalizing images in the production of warlike subjects and the fantasies that perpetuate, especially among the left, traditional notions of political dissent. She ultimately reveals the passive collusion between leftist critique and dominant discourse in which personal dimensions of war are denied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Release date: Aug 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9780231526494

Book preview

hiroshima after iraq

wellek library lectures

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WELLEK LIBRARY LECTURES

The Breaking of the Vessels

Harold Bloom (1983)

In the Tracks of Historical Materialism

Perry Anderson (1984)

Forms of Attention

Frank Kermode (1985)

Memoires for Paul de Man

Jacques Derrida (1986)

The Ethics of Reading

J. Hillis Miller (1987)

Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event

Jean-François Lyotard (1988)

A Reopening of Closure: Organicism Against Itself

Murray Krieger (1989)

Musical Elaborations

Edward W. Said (1991)

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing

Hélène Cixous (1993)

The Seeds of Time

Fredric Jameson (1994)

Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology

Evelyn Fox Keller (1995)

The Fateful Question of Culture

Geoffrey Hartman (1997)

The Range of Interpretation

Wolfgang Iser (2000)

History’s Disquiet: Modernity and Everyday Life

Harry Harootunian (2000)

Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death

Judith Butler (2000)

The Vital Illusion

Jean Baudrillard (2000)

Death of a Discipline

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2003)

Postcolonial Melancholia

Paul Gilroy (2005)

On Suicide Bombing

Talal Asad (2007)

Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom

David Harvey (2009)

hiroshima after iraq

three studies in art and war

rosalyn deutsche

columbia university press

new york

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York  Chichester, West Sussex

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Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-52649-4

Columbia University Press would like to express its appreciation to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Fine Arts for assistance with the costs of illustrations in this volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deutsche, Rosalyn.

       Hiroshima after Iraq: three studies in art and war / Rosalyn Deutsche.

           p. cm.—(Wellek library lectures in critical theory)

       Includes bibliographical references and index.

       ISBN 978-0-231-15278-5 (cloth: alk. paper)

   1. Art and war.    2. Kolbowski, Silvia. After Hiroshima mon amour.

3. Wodiczko, Krzysztof. Hiroshima projection.    4. Thornton, Leslie, 1951–Let me count the ways.    I. Title.    II. Title: Three studies in art and war.

III. Series.

       N8260.D48 2010

       700.1'03—dc22

2010000457

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [e-mail].

References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for Web sites that may have expired or changed since the book was prepared.

editorial note

The Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory are given annually at the University of California, Irvine, under the auspices of the Critical Theory Institute. The following lectures were given in May 2009.

The Critical Theory Institute

Kavita Philip, Director

To

Jennifer Hayslett

and

Elizabeth Miller

contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

one

Silvia Kolbowski

two

Leslie Thornton

three

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Notes

Bibliography

Index

acknowledgments

When I was about eight or nine years old I read the following letter, which had been written to my mother by my father, when he was waiting to return home from Germany after fighting in World War II.

June 3, 1945

Darling,

While typing a list of orders from our general, concerning carefulness about saluting officers, and such like, I day-dreamed about the following.

Edmund Goody was someone I knew in Croft. He was married and had a little child.

On the trip over he became attached to me. He said I was the only one he could talk to, and couldn’t get over how I didn’t seem to mind. He was in as bad a state as I have ever seen anyone. The idea that he was moving further and further away from his wife and child was driving him crazy. What were they doing? You didn’t know whether they were sick or what?

And here he was in the infantry; going into battle. He would surely be killed and never see his wife and child again.

Sometimes I went to another part of the boat, just to avoid him; but he searched me out. What were we doing in the infantry? I, a school teacher, and he, an accountant. I tried to explain my ideas of life and the war to him. He said this made him feel better. In the Replacement Pool, in England, he was on the verge of collapse. When I took off for the 4th Armored, he felt I was getting a break. He wasn’t getting any. Others, less qualified, were getting breaks. He was just going into the infantry to be killed. My poor wife and child! He wept when we parted, and made me promise that I would write.

He was the only one I have written to, and I wrote to him within a week. For a long time there was no answer.

In Normandy, just before the breakthrough, my letter came back with all kinds of official stamps and markings. Somewhere—tucked away among them—was the little word: DECEASED.

Jack

This man’s story had a deep and long-lasting impact on me, and so I would like to thank my father, who started me thinking about the horror of war.

My sincere gratitude goes to the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine, for inviting me to give the Wellek Library Lectures in May 2009. I was deeply honored. Special thanks to Kavita Philip, director, and Lisa Clark, administrative coordinator, whose warmth and hospitality made my visit to Irvine so delightful.

I appreciate Jennifer Crewe’s guidance in transforming the lectures into a book and Susan Pensak’s helpful copyediting.

Thanks also to the artists whose works inspired this work—Silvia Kolbowski, Leslie Thornton, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

I am particularly grateful to my dear family and friends, whose intellectual and emotional support have been crucial to me during the writing of these essays and over the years: Robert Benton, Marielle Cohen, Marion Cohen, Douglas Crimp, Rita Dennis, Martha Gever, Benjamin Hayslett, Ella Hayslett, Thornton Hayslett, Silvia Kolbowski, Anne Leiner, Marvin Leiner, Simon Leung, Aaron S. Metrikin, Fordon Miller, Stevens Miller, Robert Millner, Matt Mungan, Mignon Nixon, Yvonne Rainer, Ann Reynolds, Stephen Stancyzk, Lynne Tillman, Jane Weinstock, and Janet Wolff. Robert Ubell’s sustenance continues to mean the world to me.

introduction

Maurice Blanchot said that political impatience makes criticism warlike. Driven by the urgency of human-inflicted disasters, we want to proceed straight to the goal of social transformation, and so, wrote Blanchot, the indirection of the poetic—and, we might add, the artistic—displeases us.¹ It should not be surprising, then, that the pressing events of the past eight years—war, rendition, torture—have produced many examples of impatient criticism. Two years ago, for instance, the journal October sent a questionnaire to a group of art world intellectuals, soliciting opinions on artistic opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. October’s attempt to open up a conversation about art and war was welcome, but its survey suffered from the fallacy of the loaded question. It asked: "What, if anything, demotivates the current generation of academics and artists from assuming positions of public critique and opposition against the barbarous acts committed by the government