“Doors into Nowhere”: Dead Cities and the Natural History of Destruction
“Doors into Nowhere”: Dead Cities and the Natural History of Destruction
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“无处可去之门”：死亡城市和毁灭的自然历史
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发表时间：
2011
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
D. Gregory
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文献类型：
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作者：
D. Gregory
W. G.西博尔德关于“空战与文学”的讲座受到了两方面的批评。他声称盟军对德国的轰炸攻势已从公众记忆中抹去，这一说法受到了挑战，他呼吁用“破坏的自然历史”来解释这一空白，这一呼吁因军事暴力的“自然化”而受到谴责。然而，从不同的角度来看，Sebald的研究发现了创伤和语言断裂之间的关键联系，并且可以通过揭示抽象在构建城市转化为目标的“链条”中不可或缺的作用的方式来阐述它们。形象化是这一过程的一个核心模式，在这一过程中，选择目标似乎是一种纯粹的技术性和完全合理的做法。这样看来，锁链是一种装置，它把所有被困在其中的人都框住并带走，相反，它的表演能力可能会受到小说家、艺术家和其他人的质疑，他们在再现轰炸时会把注意力集中在抽象的过程上。
W. G. Sebald’s lectures on “Air war and literature” have been criticized on two fronts. His claim that the Allied bombing offensive against Germany was erased from public memory has been challenged, and his appeal to a “natural history of destruction” to account for that lacuna has been condemned for its “naturalization” of military violence. Read differently, however, Sebald’s inquiries identify a crucial link between trauma and the rupture of language, and they can be elaborated in ways that reveal the indispensable role of abstraction in the construction of a “kill-chain” through which cities are converted into targets. Visualization is a central modality of this process, in which targeting is made to appear as a purely technical and perfectly rational exercise. Seen thus, the kill-chain is an apparatus that enframes and entrains all those caught up in it. Conversely, its performative power can be called into question by novelists, artists, and others who draw attention to the process of abstraction in their re-presentations of bombing.