Conclusion

Abstract

The conclusion draws together the seemingly disparate threads explored in the handbook’s 30 chapters. Using the recent decision to ban “symbols of death” in the Australian Army, the chapter emphasizes the capacity of artistic responses to conflict to communicate an understanding of what might otherwise defy more literal understandings. The decision to cover the tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica when Colin Powell was justifying an invasion of Iraq is offered as the supreme example of the power of the arts to transcend context and to speak to the heart of the human experience. That is why the arts are both valued and feared.