Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art's potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity.

Brad Evans. Foreword by Jake Chapman.

List of Illustrations
Foreword: An Obituary for the Liberal, by Jake Chapman
Preface: Encountering the Void
Part I: The Sacrifice
1. Humanity Bound
2. The Sacred Order of Politics
3. The Shame of Being Human
Part II: The Fall of Liberal Humanism
4. A Higher State of Killing
5. The Death of the Victim
6. A Sickness of Reason
Part III: Into the Void
7. Annihilation
8. The Transgressive Witness
9. Wounds of Love
Notes
Index