Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture

Rey Chow's Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture is a collection of eight essays that put a myriad of texts across mediums in relation to one another, using the idea of “entanglement” as a guiding principle through an epistemological project of considering modernity. For Chow, “entanglement” weaves through what she identifies as the once coherent epistemic borders of modernity (separating art and nonart, Asia and the West) and reveals them to be illusory. The epistemological crisis caused by the increasing relativization of modernity makes the stakes of the project all the more pressing, and the book is an attempt to think through these concerns. Specifically, Chow hones in on “the status of the mediatized image in relation to reflexivity; capture and captivation; mimetic violence, victimization, and forgiveness; and the place of East Asia in globalized Western academic study” (1). Through these topics, Entanglements enters numerous sites of discussion. In the...