Author Archives: Barbara Harlow

About Barbara Harlow

teaches English and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Resistance Literature (Routledge, 1986), Barred: Women, Writing, and Political Detention (Wesleyan, 1992), After Lives: Legacies of Revolutionary Writing (Verso, 1996), and co-editor with Mia Carter of Archives of Empire (Duke, 2003). She has taught in Egypt (Cairo), Ireland (Galway), and South Africa (Pietermaritzburg and Durban). In addition to an intellectual biography of the South African activist Ruth First, she is working on a project examining historical connections of international humanitarian and human rights law with Third World literature.

What the Holy See Saw—and Didn’t See

. . . technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original in itself . . . the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition . . . And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced . . . Its social significance, particularly in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic aspect, that Continue reading → Continue reading →