One essay identifies flash points when "the event" has preoccupied Western thought from Plato to Freud. Others show how particular events--Hurricane Katrina, the Algerian War, the Haitian Revolution--betray the inadequacy of traditional nation-based frameworks for understanding the course of history. Media representations also are a central concern, as in one contributor's analysis of how child abductions turn some (white girls') bodies into events while other (brown girls') bodies are denied that status. The final essay is a meditation on the end of the world that explores how the idea of the end as event transforms everyday language into cryptic signs.
Contributors: Andrew Aisenberg, Wai Chee Dimock, Jonathan Elmer, Akira Lippit, Lloyd Pratt, Rebecca Wanzo, Hayden White