Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction: Tough Enough

1  Simone Weil: Thinking Tragically in the Age of Trauma

2  Hannah Arendt: Irony and Atrocity

3  Mary McCarthy: The Aesthetic of the Fact

4  Susan Sontag: An-aesthetics and Agency

5  Diane Arbus: A Feeling for the Camera

6  Joan Didion: The Question of Self-Pity

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index