#birkbeckvoices

The collision of the sublime and the ethical is as unavoidable as the political crises that make us attend to antique ruins with sudden and renewed urgency. This presentation addresses the difficulty of reaching a perspective on damaged objects—a challenge that is both methodological and conceptual. The Comte de Volney’s memorable evocation of Palmyra in his widely influential Reflections on the Revolutions of Empires (1791) and John Ruskin’s searching reflections on the power of ruins and the creative drives of modernity in Modern Painters (1843-1861) offer an opportunity to explore the implications of a question that has never been more pressing: is the surveying of damage always only synonymous with overlooking it? Responding to the acute pressures of a not too-distant past, Volney and Ruskin enjoin us to consider how looking over ruins might become a new mode of seeing. The much publicized situation of antiquities at risk in zones of conflict, and the challenges posed by the movements of displaced peo