HUMANITIES DECANTED: Elisabeth Weber, Kill Boxes: Facing the Legacy of US-Sponsored Torture, Indefinite Detention and Drone Warfare

Join us for a discussion of Elisabeth Weber’s new work. Refreshments will be served.

Kill Boxes addresses the legacy of US-sponsored torture, indefinite detention and drone warfare by deciphering the shocks of recognition that humanistic and artistic responses to violence bring to consciousness if readers and viewers have eyes to face them. The book provides intensive readings of philosophical texts by Jean Améry, Jacques Derrida, and Christian Thomasius, with poetic texts by Franz Kafka, Paul Muldoon, and the poet-detainees of Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp, and with artistic creations by Sallah Edine Sallat, the American artist collective Forkscrew and an international artist collective from Pakistan, France and the US. Kill Boxes demonstrates the complexity of humanistic responses to crimes committed in the name of national security.

Elisabeth Weber’s publications include Speaking about Torture (Fordham, 2012), co-edited with Julie Carlson, and the edited collection Living Together: Jacques Derrida’s Communities of Violence and Peace (Fordham, 2012). She currently serves as department chair of Germanic and Slavic Studies and as vice-chair of the Program of Comparative Literature.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Harry Girvetz Memorial Endowment.