The influential cultural critic Elisabeth Bronfen sets out in this book a conversation between
literature cinema and visual culture. The crossmappings in and between these essays address
the cultural survival of image formulas involving portraiture and the uncanny relation between
the body and its representability the gendering of war death and the fragility of life as
well as sovereignty and political power. Each chapter tracks transformations that occur as
aesthetic figurations travel not only from one historical moment to the next but also from one
medium to another. Following Bronfen on these journeys into the cultural imaginary the reader
encounters prominent artists such as Edgar Degas Francesca Woodman Paul McCarthy Eva Hesse
Louise Bourgeois Richard Wagner Pablo Picasso and William Shakespeare alongside Classical
Hollywood's film noir and melodrama and the TV series The Wire and House of Cards.
