Brad Evans. Foreword by Jake Chapman.

List of IllustrationsForeword: An Obituary for the Liberal, by Jake ChapmanPreface: Encountering the VoidPart I: The Sacrifice1. Humanity Bound2. The Sacred Order of Politics3. The Shame of Being HumanPart II: The Fall of Liberal Humanism4. A Higher State of Killing5. The Death of the Victim6. A Sickness of ReasonPart III: Into the Void7. Annihilation8. The Transgressive Witness9. Wounds of LoveNotesIndex

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.