Regarding the Pain of Others

A brilliant, clear-eyed consideration of the visual representation of violence in our culture--its ubiquity, meanings, and effects.

Considered one of the greatest critics of her generation, Susan Sontag followed up her monumental On Photography with an extended study of human violence, reflecting on a question first posed by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas: How in your opinion are we to prevent war?

"For a long time some people believed that if the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war."

One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. But are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the daily barrage of such images? What does it mean to care about the suffering of others far away?

First published more than twenty years after her now-classic book On Photography, which changed how we understand the very condition of being modern, Regarding the Pain of Others challenges our thinking not only about the uses and means of images, but about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

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131 pages

Average rating: 7

6 RATINGS

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2 REVIEWS

Community Reviews

Anonymous
Nov 18, 2024
8/10 stars
This book is super tiny but the content is quite multifaceted to comprehend at the same time while I was retrospecting these to my own life events I found that the author did a commendable job of capturing so many aspects of our biological and sociological nature, especially the way she described the shock value aspect, exotification of death and human sufferings(
rothkore
Jul 14, 2024
7/10 stars
Sontag definitely makes plenty of great points, but at times, she completely drops points she brings up. Additionally, a lot of her wording feels very condescending at times. I still recommend it, but it's not the easiest read.

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