[ecrea] Book announcement: BLACKOUT: On Memory and Catastrophe

BLACKOUT: On Memory and Catastrophe
> Joan Grossman
>
> Now available from Atropos Press
> Think Media series
>
> Product Description
> History is marked by catastrophic events that defy meaning and 
> understanding. The 20th century was a century of prosperity and 
> progress; it was also history's bloodiest. The death toll from war 
> and genocide reached 140 million people. Trauma of this magnitude 
> poses grave challenges to memory and thought. This work explores 
> failures of memory and cognition - the blackout - as a condition 
> that plagues history, and is particularly problematic in an era of 
> media, in which memory is increasingly disembodied and virtualized, 
> undermined by a Generalized Media Disorder. Technologies of media 
> and war are creating a condition in which the virtual world is 
> displacing the ethical world. BLACKOUT traces this phenomenon 
> through a century of upheaval - from World War I, which exceeded all 
> previous notions of destruction, to the War on Terror, a perpetual 
> war in a realm of perpetual media. World War II is particularly 
> significant in its deployment of previously unfathomable 
> technologies of disappearance - extermination, nuclear weapons, and 
> the massive incineration of cities in Germany and Japan. The 
> blackout is a space of memory and thinking that collapses with 
> catastrophe and falls into a stupor. Our humanity has been nearly 
> extinguished by the tremendous violence it has enacted, pushing 
> philosophy, language and ethics to their limits.
>
> Joan Grossman is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and video 
> artist, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been shown in more 
> than 20 countries. She also teaches media theory and production, and 
> received her doctorate in Media Philosophy from the European 
> Graduate School in Switzerland.
>
> Paperback: 118 pages
> Publisher: Atropos Press (July 20, 2009)
> Language: English
> ISBN-10: 0981997236
> ISBN-13: 978-0981997230
> Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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