Acknowledging Fascination with Catastrophe and Terrorism:

September 11 and the Nuclear Destruction of Hiroshima/Nagasaki

Authors

  • Emmanouil Aretoulakis

Keywords:

Beauty, Hiroshima, 9/11, Terrorism, Aesthetic, Judgment, Imagination, Ethics

Abstract

At the end of the twentieth century there was a critical shift from prioritizing the anti-aesthetic and the “sublime” towards favoring beauty in aesthetic as well as political matters. In this context, the present article discusses the role of beauty and aesthetics in such major disasters as the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki nuclear bombings. More specifically, it posits that there is a morally unacceptable feeling of fascination when witnessing destructive events of such magnitude. On the other hand, aesthetic appreciation is paradoxically indispensable for an ethical assessment of man-made catastrophes.

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Author Biography

Emmanouil Aretoulakis

Emmanouil Aretoulakis is Fellow at the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, where he teaches English Literature, Literary Criticism and Aesthetics. His current research interests are related to the connection between philosophy/aesthetics and literature. His more recent publications include ‘Katherine Mansfield and (Post)colonial Feeling’ (Journal of Katherine Mansfield Studies 2013), ‘Towards a Posthumanist Ecology: Nature Without Humanity in Wordsworth and Shelley’ (European Journal of English Studies, June 2014), and “Thomas More’s Utopia and the Culture of Reading as Seeing” (Journal of Early Modern Studies, March 2014).

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Published

2021-10-27

How to Cite

Aretoulakis, E. (2021). Acknowledging Fascination with Catastrophe and Terrorism:: September 11 and the Nuclear Destruction of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 1(1), 11–26. Retrieved from https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/21