The Threshold of the Visible World

Examining the topic of love, this work argues that it has a political role to play as well as a role within the psychic domain. It brings together Benjamin's notion of the aura with Brecht's notion of alienation to articulate a new set of parameters for political representation, and demonstrates that our look is always shadowed by our desires and anxieties, and mediated by representations which surround us - this is what causes our visual violence towards others. The author explores the conscious and unconscious circumstances under which such acts of violence might be undone, and the look induced to see and affirm what is abject, and alien to itself.