Now in paperback for the first time, Frames of War explores the media’s portrayal of state violence, a process integral to the way in which the West wages modern war. This portrayal has saturated our understanding of human life, and has led to the exploitation and abandonment of whole peoples, who are cast as existential threats rather than as living populations in need of protection. These people are framed as already lost, to imprisonment, unemployment, and starvation, and can easily be dismissed. In the twisted logic that rationalizes their deaths, the loss of such populations is deemed necessary to protect the lives of "the living."
This disparity, Butler argues, has profound implications for why and when we feel horror, guilt, loss, and indifference, both in the context of war and, increasingly, everday life. In this urgent response to increasingly dominant methods of coercion, violence, and racism, Butler calls for a reconceptualization of the Left, one united in opposition and resistence to the illegitimate and arbitrary effects of state violence.