This is a book about the exhilaration and the catastrophe of embodiment. Analyzing different instances of injured bodies, Peggy Phelan considers what sustained attention to the affective force of trauma might yield for critical theory. Advocating what she calls "performative writing," she creates an extraordinary fusion of critical and creative thinking which erodes the distinction between art and theory, fact and fiction.
The bodies she examines here include Christ's, as represented in Caravaggio's painting The Incredulity of St Thomas, Anita Hill's and Clarence Thomas's bodies...