What We Are Reading Today: ‘Discrete and Computational Geometry’

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Updated 13 October 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Discrete and Computational Geometry’

Authors: Satyan L. Devadoss and Joseph O’rourke 

“Discrete and Computational Geometry” bridges the theoretical world of discrete geometry with the applications-driven realm of computational geometry, offering a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to this cutting-edge frontier of mathematics and computer science.

Now fully updated and expanded, this richly illustrated textbook is an invaluable learning tool for students in mathematics, computer science, engineering, and physics.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Rituals of War’

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Updated 29 December 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Rituals of War’

  • Bahrani brings together and analyzes facets of war and sovereign power that fall under the categories of representation and display, the aesthetic, the ritualistic, and the supernatural

Author: Zainab Bahrani

“Rituals of War” is an investigation into the earliest historical records of violence and biopolitics. In Mesopotamia, ancient Iraq (ca. 3000–500 BC) rituals of war and images of violence constituted part of the magical technologies of warfare that formed the underlying irrational processes of war. In the book, three lines of inquiry are converged into one historical domain of violence, namely, war, the body, and representation.

Building on Foucault’s argument in “Discipline and Punish” that the art of punishing must rest on a whole technology of representation, Zainab Bahrani investigates the ancient Mesopotamian record to reveal how that culture relied on the portrayal of violence and control as part of the mechanics of warfare. Moreover she takes up the more recent arguments of Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power and biopolitic to focus on the relationship of power, the body and violence in Assyro-Babylonian texts and monuments of war.

Bahrani brings together and analyzes facets of war and sovereign power that fall under the categories of representation and display, the aesthetic, the ritualistic, and the supernatural.