Refractions of Violence collects the recent essays of leading cultural critic and intellectual historian Martin Jay. Ranging over a wide variety of subjects, from Walter Benjamin’s response to World War I to the Holocaust and the events of 9/11, this collection addresses the troubling issues of the intersection of violence and visual culture. It argues that we live in a closed economy of violence in which no outside can provide us with a safe haven from the treat of sudden, perhaps even fatal injury, either real or symbolic. By examining a number of ways in which the dialectic of violence and counter-violence finds its way into the arts, both high and low, and permeates visual experience in general, it hopes to cast some light on the dark recesses of contemporary life.