This interdisciplinary volume offers a bold rethinking of cruelty in contemporary political, cultural, and psychological contexts. Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural theory, and media studies, the book explores how cruelty manifests across institutions, infrastructures, and representations—from war photography and neoliberal economics to AI and surrealist art. It examines the breakdown of mediation in politics, the crisis of the autonomous subject, and the libidinal economy of sadism and masochism. Rather than treating cruelty as a moral lapse or psychological pathology, the contributors examine it as a structural and aesthetic force that organizes perception, politics, and representation. The volume provides a multi-layered anatomy of cruelty, dissecting its material, symbolic, and affective dimensions. With authors from a range of global locations, the book offers a truly global and methodologically diverse perspective. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of continental philosophy, political theory, and social philosophy.

Szymon Wróbel is a professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Artes Liberales at the University of Warsaw and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author of numerous publications, including the co-edited book, Rethinking Materialism: Making the World Material Again (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Katarzyna Szafranowska researches at the University of Warsaw. She is a philosopher and cultural theorist, working as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Artes Liberales.