Synopses & Reviews
Our understandings of culture and of the catastrophe unleashed by National Socialism have always been regarded as interrelated. For all its brutality, Nazism always spoke in the name of the great German tradition, often using such high culture to justify atrocities committed. Were not such actions necessary for the defense of classical cultural values and ideal images against the polluted, degenerate groups who sought to sully and defile them?
Ironically, some of National Socialism's victims confronted and interpreted their experiences precisely through this prism of culture and catastrophe. Many of these victims had traditionally regarded Germany as a major civilizing force. In fact, from the late eighteenth century on, German Jews had constructed themselves in German culture's image. Many of the German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who became victims of National Socialism had been raised and completely absorbed in the German humanistic tradition.
Steven E. Aschheim here engages the multiple aspects of German and German-Jewish cultural history which touch upon the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe, providing insights into the relationship between German culture and the origins, dispositions, and aftermath of National Socialism. He analyzes the designation of Nazism as part of the West's cultural code representing an absolute standard of evil, and sheds light on the problematics of current German, Jewish, and Israeli inscriptions of Nazism and its atrocities.
Review
"[This book] ranges from the most general reflections (on the relationship between "culture" and Nazism) to the intellectual-historical (on the myth of "Judaization" in Germany, on Nazism and Nietzsche, and on the Weimar-era Jewish revolt against rationalism) to historiographical critique (on recent Holocaust literature with special attention to racial thought). Throughout the book, Aschheim is interested to provide his reader with a summary of the various ways that Nazism and the Holocaust have been treated in philosophical and historical literature, in national polemic an public commemoration."-Tikkun,
Review
“Expertly dissects the racist underpinnings of capital punishment while pushing some intellectual boundaries.”
-International Socialist Review,
Review
“The authors give the nation an unflinching view of the shameful influence of racism in death penalty cases. This is a must read for anyone who cares about fairness in application of the death penalty and respect for the rule of law in our modern society.”
-Senator Edward M. Kennedy,
Review
“Ogeltree and Sarat combine the most severe criminal punishment with the bugaboo of racial class and prejudice in their book From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State. The professors astutely note that the death penalty is often used as a club to keep poor and desperate minorities in line in the larger white society.”
-Black Issues Book Review,
Review
“Professors Charles Ogletree and Austin Sarat gather an impressive lineup between racial politics in America and the killing of African-Americans.”
-Harvard Law Review,
Review
“An elegant compendium of essays written by sociologists, historians, criminologists, and lawyers. The essays starkly reveal how this country's death penalty has its roots in lynchings, and how it operates to sustain a racist agenda.”
-The Federal Lawyer,
Synopsis
Our understandings of culture and of the catastrophe unleashed by National Socialism have always been regarded as interrelated. For all its brutality, Nazism always spoke in the name of the great German tradition, often using such high culture to justify atrocities committed. Were not such actions necessary for the defense of classical cultural values and ideal images against the polluted, degenerate groups who sought to sully and defile them?
Ironically, some of National Socialism's victims confronted and interpreted their experiences precisely through this prism of culture and catastrophe. Many of these victims had traditionally regarded Germany as a major civilizing force. In fact, from the late eighteenth century on, German Jews had constructed themselves in German culture's image. Many of the German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who became victims of National Socialism had been raised and completely absorbed in the German humanistic tradition.
Steven E. Aschheim here engages the multiple aspects of German and German-Jewish cultural history which touch upon the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe, providing insights into the relationship between German culture and the origins, dispositions, and aftermath of National Socialism. He analyzes the designation of Nazism as part of the West's cultural code representing an absolute standard of evil, and sheds light on the problematics of current German, Jewish, and Israeli inscriptions of Nazism and its atrocities.
Synopsis
Since 1976, over forty percent of prisoners executed in American jails have been African American or Hispanic. This trend shows little evidence of diminishing, and follows a larger pattern of the violent criminalization of African American populations that has marked the country's history of punishment.
In a bold attempt to tackle the looming question of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, Ogletree and Sarat headline an interdisciplinary cast of experts in reflecting on this disturbing issue. Insightful original essays approach the topic from legal, historical, cultural, and social science perspectives to show the ways that the death penalty is racialized, the places in the death penalty process where race makes a difference, and the ways that meanings of race in the United States are constructed in and through our practices of capital punishment.
From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State not only uncovers the ways that race influences capital punishment, but also attempts to situate the linkage between race and the death penalty in the history of this country, in particular the history of lynching. In its probing examination of how and why the connection between race and the death penalty has been so strong throughout American history, this book forces us to consider how the death penalty gives meaning to race as well as why the racialization of the death penalty is uniquely American.
Description
Includes bibliographical references(p. 136-205) and index.
About the Author
Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., is Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute at Harvard Law School. He is co-editor (with Austin Sarat) of
From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State: Race and the Death Penalty in America and
When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice (both from NYU Press).
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is author or editor of more than seventy books, including ,When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition and (with Charles Ogletree) The Road to Abolition? On the Future of Capital Punishment (NYU Press, 2009).