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Title: Blood Rites : Origins and History of the Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich ISBN: 0-8050-5787-0 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.79 (29 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: AN AMAZING THEORY OF THE MEANING AND ORIGINS OF WAR
Comment: I thought I knew why there was war. As a Freudian psychoanalyst Freud's theory of the aggressive instinct made a lot of sense. But the author seeks to understand the phenomenology of ritual sacrifice and an almost religious passion with which young men march into certain death. She finds an evolutionary connection with prehistoric blood rites, based on early man's fear of predator carnivores. He makes sacrifices to apparently insatiable carnivorous gods, from historic documents such as the Old Testament. War is a way of feeling powerful and invulnerable, as a defense against helplessness and vulnerability of early man. It is a wonder she did not include the ritual of the bullfight and the ultimate development of God, Jesus, who does not demand ritual sacrifice, but intones, follow me and eat me (the mass) and I will offer you Everlasting Life. The Greatest Story Ever Told...
Rating: 4
Summary: Daring, original and extremely thought provoking
Comment: Blood Rites rekindled my long held interest in (almost non-existent) theories of war. I recalled running around playing "guns" with neighborhood kids; long and involved role-playing fantasies from my pre-teen years; and my later interest in movies like Full Metal Jacket and books like Blood Meridian and Citizens.
Blood Rites manages to tie my youthful digressions into a theory about the larger, bloodier, more despairing and bleak world of historical warfare. According to the book, my obsession with war is part of long-running tradition that equates "becoming-a-man" with the indoctrination into the ways of war. She _doesn't_ claim that war comes from aggressive hunter males (in fact, she tries to thoroughly stomp that argument into the ground). She claims that our aeon-long status as prey created a long running fear and admiration of animal predators. Later, after we became predators, the fear and admiration was shifted to the small band male hunters. (She states recent archeological evidence that suggests that small band hunters were predated by tribal herding practices. These practices ended after we drove most of the large herdable herbivores into extinction.) The hunters started providing a smaller portion of the tribal food (around 90% of our ancestor's diet was provided by gathering). And at some point, they turned their predator skills against other tribes and demanded the fear and admiration once exclusively belonging to animals. (Kind of... it's a little more involved than that.)
Warriors (almost exclusively male) ascended to total power on the back of war. However, once created, War had a "life" of its own. No one could be totally peaceful unless completely cut-off from contact with war-like states (which was hard to do unless you were an Eskimo or an Australian Bushman). Once war was discovered or invented no one could ignore it. Every society had to escalate the potential and possibility of war. This constant escalation of warfare changed the rules and even! tually led to today's "total war." In today's war there is almost no notion of civilian. Everyone is forced into war.
However, her book fumbles near the end. She states that a theory of war is needed in order to fight it, but the end of the book sounds false and forced. She starts to throw ideas at the wall, hoping one or two will stick. (She does admit to having no real working idea on how to stop war.) Still, the ending doesn't take away from the brilliant originality of the majority of the book...
One of things I'm interested in is any connection between her theory and Deleuze and Guattari's theories of the "war machine." Their "war machine" seems to be largely ! a theory about the effects of war and hers is largely about the origin and perpetuation of war.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very good. Is it too broad?
Comment: Considered in its own narrowest terms -- a genealogy of the passions surrounding the human practice of war -- this is a compelling read. One can see this work as a real-world application of E.O. Wilson's idea of Consilience, as Ehrenreich uses her training in biology to elucidate and inform what is conventionally seen as a question for the humanities.
Starting from biology, Ehrenreich calls on experts from many disciplines, "soft" and "hard," as she lays out her case. This is both promising and perilous. A great deal of reading and study has gone in to this book, as is evident from her many citations. It would require an expertise deeper and broader than mine to assess whether she has truly "done her homework." What I found lacking, at times, was a sense of the contrast between her thesis and what had come before it. Is she synthesizing the likes of Toynbee, Weber, Fichte, Hegel, and the many others she mentions, or is she overturning them? I did not always get a clear sense of where previous thinkers had gone wrong on the topics she addresses.
In the end, this is not a damning criticism; a reader geninely interested in the issues covered in this book will find a deep mine of additional reading in Ehrenreich's index and bibliography. This book is represents a seemingly fresh start on a matter of great human importance.
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Title: For Her Own Good : 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English ISBN: 0385126514 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 June, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English ISBN: 0912670207 Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY Pub. Date: April, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English ISBN: 0912670134 Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY Pub. Date: December, 1973 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title: Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class by Barbara Ehrenreich ISBN: 0060973331 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 26 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: The Hearts of Men : American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment by Barbara Ehrenreich ISBN: 0385176155 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 March, 1987 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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