by Aaron Tugendhaft
In 2015, men carried sledgehammers into the Mosul Museum and shattered dozens of ancient Assyrian sculptures. They filmed the destruction; edited the clips; added dialogue, a soundtrack, and slow motion; and uploaded the resulting music video to social media. The global intelligentsia condemned the video’s producers (who were members of ISIS) as boors, barbarians, and madmen. But the video was powerful because it juxtaposed ancient and modern, artistry and violence. There is nothing uncultured about systematically destroying an enemy’s artwork or using cutting-edge technology to edit a video. Only scholars know which books to burn.
Aaron Tugendhaft, a Near Eastern studies scholar of Iraqi Jewish heritage, responded to the video by writing a biting work of political theory and art criticism that sympathizes more with ISIS than with UNESCO. He centers on two theses. First, “images . . . are what make political life possible.” And second, therefore, a