Description
Book SynopsisHow do we react to disaster, to political uprising, to spectacle? With relief missions, donations, and what words? While You Were Approaching the Spectacle But Before You Were Transformed by It, the second book by Lytton Smith, explores the relationship between poetry, news, and the lives of others. Poised between Brecht's critique of empathy and Martha Nussbaum's politics of compassion, this powerful collection plays with direct address and personal testimony as it investigates the relationship between ethics and the aesthetic. Drawing on sources that range from travel guides, BBC reports, contemporary art exhibitions, and sixteenth-century debates about masque, Smith's book offers a range of forms that test the edges of the page, the borders of communication.
Table of ContentsTravel Narrative • Of the Kingdom Which Counterweights Civilization • Friendship as a Rhetoric of Retreating Past Borders • Begins the Civil War • A Turned Page as the Measure of Suspense • By means of a mountain path or a merchant new-arrived or a fragmented map in a pawnbroker’s: new travels, tells of a country through which goods might be easily moved • International Natural Resources • First of the Invasions • Encounter with Elephants • The Spectacle (I) • Some Corner of a Foreign Field • Trade Winds, Trade Routes • Civil War • Summer in the Delta • Refraction • Civil War (Forgotten) • Native Characteristics Approved • Bringing Violins, Games, and Bibles to Coastal Areas • The Spectacle (II) • River Insurgence • Barefoot Across the Floor of the Pagoda • ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling • Independence Day • General H - Flees the Abode of Kings • Patriotism Does Not Doubt for National Joy • Civil War • The Spectacle (III) • Moonlight at the Pagoda • The Spectacle (IV) • Silk First Reaches the City’s Markets • Sweet and Fitting • Telescopic Philanthropy • Public Sites Are For Gatherings (Of Less Than Five) • House Arrest • Refugee Blues • In the International News Headlines • Civil War as the Longest Uninterrupted in World History (Forgotten) • Monsoon Deluge • As [They] Lay Dying • On Empathy • The Spectacle (V) • International Disaster Relief Fund • Civil War • Resettling the Capital City • The Spectacle (VI) • As the Teak Forests Move • We Are Here To Protect Even By Necessary Imposition • Where Were You In This? • By means of a military state and the governmental control of goods, carbon resources, travel visas, food, and labour; in the wake of historical occupations by and upon the national construct; through the resituation of villagers, villages, and language; offering momentary promises of alternative behavior; because it would be wrong to tell authority that its policies have failed; hamstrung by sanctions (except those related to global concerns such as rare wood, oil, pipelines, etc; dismayed by the mis-perception of people-minded rule, we have reached this stage of national happiness:
