This introductory essay locates the question of the banalization of war in relation to the suppression of the link between violence and civility in modernity. It thereby identifies banality and spectacle as two axes of a shared political condition of appearance. This condition of appearance is explored through Hannah Arendt’s account of action as the space of appearance and its basis in plurality in The Human Condition (1958). The essay argues that Arendt’s more historically engaged philosophical work—including The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), and her interviews about the Eichmann trial—rearticulates this abstract account through a historically informed conception of “social texture” which requires care for “what the world looks like,” for the Mitsein of Dasein . This care for what the world looks like is identified in the poetry of Iraqi American poet Dunya Mikhail, and is shown to provide a critical framework for addressing contemporary war culture through Arendt’s concepts of “banality” and “functioning.”

中文翻译：

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“世界是什么样子”：论平庸与奇观

这篇介绍性文章将战争平庸化的问题与现代性中暴力与文明之间联系的压制联系起来。因此，它将平庸和奇观确定为共享的政治表象条件的两个轴。通过汉娜·阿伦特 (Hannah Arendt) 在《人类状况》(The Human Condition) (1958) 中将行为描述为外观空间及其多元基础，探索了这种外观条件。这篇文章认为，阿伦特更具历史意义的哲学著作——包括《极权主义的起源》(1951)、《耶路撒冷的艾希曼》(1963)，以及她对艾希曼审判的采访——通过“社会结构”的历史知识概念重新阐述了这个抽象的描述。需要关心“世界的样子”，对于此在的 Mitsein。