Suspending the distinction between headline news and high theory, Avital Ronell examines the diverse figures of finitude in our modernity: war, guerrilla video, trauma TV, AIDS, music, divorce, sadism, electronic tagging, rumor. Her essays address such questions as, How do rumors kill? How has video become the conscience of TV? How have the police come to be everywhere, even where they are not? Is peace possible? “[W]riting to the community of those who have no community—to those who have known the infiniteness of abandonment,” her work explores the possibility, one possibility among many, that “this time we have gone too far”: “One last word. It is possible that we have gone too far. This possibility has to be considered if we, as a species, as a history, are going to get anywhere at all.”

Avital Ronell’s books include The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (1989) and Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania (1992), both published by the University of Nebraska Press. She is chair of and professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature and a professor of comparative literature at New York University.

"Brilliant."—Esquire

"'Trauma TV' is . . . the most illuminating essay on TV and video ever written."—Artforum

"[Avital Ronell] jumps between the vulgate of television talk shows and the high theoretical jargon of the academy with the adroitness of a speed-fiend switchboard operator. . . . [She is] the reigning queen of termino-millenarianism."—Poetics Today

"Over the past decade, Avital Ronell has put together what must be one of the most remarkable critical oeuvres of our era."—Jonathan Culler

"This collection is stunning. Ronell has achieved a work of thinking at the highest level."—John P. Leavey Jr.