Hostile takeovers on violence and media 2006

This volume takes the notion of ‘hostile takeovers’ as a starting point to look at the interrelations between economic-political power and the cultural negotiations of media and performance as they are expressed in the representation of violence or in the potential violence of representational acts. In the financial world, hostile takeovers are typically described in terms of excessive consumption whereby one company aggressively devours ist financial prey against the wishes of the target company’s management, shareholders, and board of directors. The articles presented here critically examine this trope of violent consumption and investigate cultural constructions of violent spectacle and representation. A key concern is how a historical and historiographical perspective can begin to pin down the cultural construction of the imagery of violence. In exploring this problematics, the papers collected here comprise a multifaceted mosaic demonstrating the interdiciplinary and intercultural diversity of the various research perspectives and attempting to bring them into dialogue.