Notes
[ 167 ] 1. Case Study: Of Phantom Nations 1. In recent years, there has been a veritable explosion of related work, in at least four distinct fields. A very partial list would include, in philosophy, the work of Akeel Bilgrami, Martha Nussbaum, and Amélie O. Rorty; in affect theory, that of Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Eve K. Sedgwick; in trauma studies, that of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Cathy Caruth, and Dominick LaCapra; and in literary history, Nancy Armstrong, Margaret Doody, and Janet Todd. In the discussion that follows, as well as in chapter 2, only the barest tips of these several icebergs will be seen. 2. The website for the Smithsonian American Art Museum displays this letter in a slideshow presentation of the building’s history, called “Temple of Invention. History of a National Landmark”: www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/pob/index.html. 3. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “convulsion” and “convulsiveness” (954, 955). 4. Well, not entirely. In fact, the phantom arm disappeared, but the hand did not—it remains present to this day, felt as if it were attached directly to the shoulder where the patient’s amputation occurred. This bizarre phenomenon Ramachandran refers to as the “telescoping” of the phantom (as in closing a telescope); he has observed it in other patients as well. The neuroscientist speculates that the persistence of the hand as phantom is due to the greater relative importance of the sensory information sent by that appendage to the brain. 5. Ramachandran: “How does this illusory feeling happen? When you move your hand, motor command centers in the front of the brain send a signal out, down the spinal cord to the muscles on the opposite side of the body. At the same time, a copy of the command (like an email cc) goes to the parietal lobe [. . .] [T]his area gets both visual and proprioceptive (body-position sense) feedback that can be compared with the motor command, thereby forming a feedback loop to ensure accuracy. If the arm is lost, there is no proprioceptive feedback, but the copy of the command is nonetheless sent to the parietal lobe and sensed by the patient’s brain as movements of the phantom” (17). Notes [ 168 ] NOTES TO PAGES 23–41 2. Thesis: The Crime of the Scene 1. See, for example, the following studies: Charaudeau, La télévision et la guerre; Gow, Paterson, and Preston, Bosnia by Television; and Sadkovich, The U.S. Media and Yugoslavia, 1991–1995. 2. To my knowledge, the first use of this passage—which has since become something of a touchstone—to unpack the historical import of sentimentalism can be found in “Making a Thing into a Man: The Sentimental Novel and Slavery,” from Philip Fisher’s Hard Facts (87–127). 3. It did occur to me that Rousseau could conceivably have been engaged here in a philosophical form of hostile takeover, attempting, in other words, to turn Mandeville’s satire into support for his own cause. Mandeville does grant that even criminals feel sympathy, though he uses that admission to expose the ineffectiveness of benevolence itself—a criminal is still a criminal, despite his heart of gold. For Rousseau, what is essential is that sympathy (and not only greed or self-preservation) can be seen as common to all humankind, and beyond. 4. Just what irony might look like in a war photo seemed puzzling to me, until I recalled another of Haviv’s photos. In this shot, a middle-aged soldier with a rifle rides a bicycle past a burning house, looking directly at the photographer and waving. When I show this photo in class, my students are generally confused by it, and occasionally they come up with some rather bizarre and inventive explanations for what it represents. They need to be told, of course, that the soldier is a member of the Serb paramilitary force which must have set the home on fire, and that his salute to the photographer is a nationalist sign, not the peace symbol or a V for victory. They are amused, in any case, both by his age and by the fact that he’s riding a woman’s bike. 5. This story, first reported by Elizabeth Drew of the Washington Post, has since been very widely circulated. See, for example, Drew’s book On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency, as well as an article by Jason De Parle in the New York Times...
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