“Still Death” (2024-2025)

In geopolitical contexts such as these, it’s very difficult to divorce oneself and one’s writing from the overwhelming feelings that they produce. As blessed—and cursed—as we are to live in an era where information is easily at our fingertips, it’s best not to take such privileges at face value and instead to examine more closely the means by which such feelings are conveyed and expressed, the ways in which the horrors committed on our behalf are repackaged and delivered to our doorstep. Even by the first class of the semester, reading through the syllabus, I was certain that this was to be the subject of my final paper. But, it was a struggle to put such a complicated discourse to paper, and I ended up wasting my first few drafts on idealized platitudes and trope-ridden bemoaning of social-media culture. After deleting pages and pages of trash—which I was less than comfortable with, used to submitting first-draft research papers for other classes—I forced myself to slow down and do something I should really consider more often: reading. Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, which has stuck with me since I was 12 (though I still wonder what business a sixth-grader had reading it), provided the base, and Plato’s Republic, which I only recently picked up, the lens. The end result, written with both books open the night before our drafts were due, went through invaluable revision by both my peers and my professor, eventually becoming a work of which I could be genuinely proud.

Born and raised in the stifling suburban hellscape of Los Angeles, Alexander Palmieri barely escaped to New York City, where he studies Public Policy at the College of Arts and Sciences. Combining an indescribable knack for writing prescriptively on subjects with which he’s only tangentially familiar and the wellspring of creativity that is procrastination-induced desperation, Alex’s essay explores the ethical and moral quandaries of war photography, the responsibilities of those who practice said art form, and the ways in which it can enrage and pacify beneficiaries of foreign wars—often at the same time.