“In what ways have artists, academics, and cultural institutions responded to the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq?”

Rosalyn Deutsche appears to associate “Left Melancholy” with this issue of the journal October, which is subtitled “In what ways have artists, academics, and cultural institutions responded to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq?” It included forty-two responses to October’s six-point questionnaire, including from Deutsche, an act “urged upon us”, the editors say, by “the increasing sense of horror and shame at our being an involuntary part of the ever-expanding war economy”. The editors were also keen to understand “why the role of academics, intellectuals, and artists in the cultural public sphere has been reduced to anaesthesia and amnesia” after “the events of 9/11” in 2001.