Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror

Written in the context of critical dialogues about the war on terror and the global crisis in human rights violations, authors of the collected volume Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror - edited by Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello - ask a series of questions: What definitions of humanity account for the persistence of human rights violations? How do we define terror, and how do we understand the ways that terror affects the representation of those that both suffer and profit from it? Why is it that the representation of terror often depends on a distorted (for example, racist, fascist, xenophobic, essentialist, and eliminationist) representation of human beings? And, most importantly, can representation, especially forms of art, rescue humanity from the forces of terror, or does it run the risk of making it possible? The authors of the volume’s articles discuss aspects of terror with regard to human rights events across the globe, but especially in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Their discussion and reflection demonstrate that the need to question continuously and to engage in permanent critique does not contradict the need to seek answers, to advocate social change, and to intervene critically.