The Age of Virtual Reproduction

by Spring Ulmer

Literary Nonfiction. Spring Ulmer's THE AGE OF VIRTUAL REPRODUCTION disrupts and redefines established patterns of seeing as she looks both at and beyond suffering and slaughter for an ethical way to live. Relentlessly in relation and in isolation, Ulmer meditates on moral and emotional anaesthesia--our age of numbing. On the road in Rwanda, investigating executions, meditating on photographs of the past, Ulmer interrogates her own and others' often romantic obsession with what is disappearing and asks how to be in touch with the real and reality--either through the self or through its loss. Looking at work by August Sander, Walter Benjamin, Congolese painter Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, John Berger, Jean Genet, Kenzaburo Oe, and others, she finds, with Benjamin, that there is no cultural document that is not at the same time a record of barbarism. THE AGE OF VIRTUAL REPRODUCTION offers a catalogue (of people, stories, nature, and art) that maintains that more than just surviving, life can be overwhelmingly and beautifully patterned, and thus, critically, recognizable.

75 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Jon Cone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible collection of essays, bending our expectations of what an essay can be, exploring the political and the personal in an associative way drawn directly from poetry. These essays shimmer, in the way that Sontag's could shimmer, or the way that Benjamin's could shimmer and enlarge a detail and reveal the altogether unexpected. I can't recommend this book highly or strongly enough:

Three young men
on their way to a dance,
on their way from country to city,
on their way from childhood to battlefield,
reeking of melancholy.

from 'An Atlas of Ill-Fitting'

[Lauren Hesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was able to edit this manuscript as the intern at Essay Press. It was wild, experimental and transformative. I think Ulmer is fantastic in her narrative and style.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-done debut nonfiction collection, with some interesting assemblages inside. Ulmer is international in scope, dealing with the collective guilt of American government and its people whether in Iraq, Rwanda, or Japan. Heavy on the Benjamin without being obfuscatory, Ulmer's talent is clearly recognizable, and yet it still misses the spark for me that changes admiration of ability and talent into teenage-style swooning.