Synopses & Reviews
Since the end of the Cold War, the idea of human rights has been made into a justification for intervention by the world's leading economic and military powers—above all, the United States—in countries that are vulnerable to their attacks. The criteria for such intervention have become more arbitrary and self-serving, and their form more destructive, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Iraq. Until the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the large parts of the left was often complicit in this ideology of intervention—discovering new “Hitlers” as the need arose, and denouncing antiwar arguments as appeasement on the model of Munich in 1938.
Jean Bricmonts Humanitarian Imperialism is both a historical account of this development and a powerful political and moral critique. It seeks to restore the critique of imperialism to its rightful place in the defense of human rights. It describes the leading role of the United States in initiating military and other interventions, but also on the obvious support given to it by European powers and NATO. It outlines an alternative approach to the question of human rights, based on the genuine recognition of the equal rights of people in poor and wealthy countries.
Timely, topical, and rigorously argued, Jean Bricmonts book establishes a firm basis for resistance to global war with no end in sight.
Review
“Kidada Williamss
They Left Great Marks on Me is an impressive and important contribution to our understanding of African American life after the Civil War. Whereas most previous scholars utilized the records of the Freedm
ens Bureau and other agencies to document the causes, characteristics, and extent of anti-black violence during the postebellum period, Williams focuses on the importance of the testimony itself, especially to the African Americans who were brave enough to provide such testimony in the hostile environment of the era. She convincingly argues that this act of testifying itself was one of the galvanizing forces for the movement that eventually produced a host of civil rights activists at the turn of the twentieth century. While lifting up the transformative power of public testimony, Ms. Williams also helps re-center the discussion of white-on-black violence in the late nineteenth century, which all too often focuses on the most spectacular form of violence during that period, lynching, to the detriment of the more common and arguably more important day-to-day violence suffered by African Americans. This is an important work that should be widely read by all those interested in late nineteenth century America and the origins of the civil rights movement of the 20th century." -William D. Carrigan,Rowan University, and author of
The Making of a Lynching Culture Review
"Highly recommended."-E.R. Crowther,CHOICE
Review
"In her important, beautifully written book, Kidada E. Williams powerfully intervenes in the academic narrative of lynching, recovering African American testimonies of white terror and what she calls the 'vernacular history' that blacks constructed with regard to white efforts to re-subjugate African Americans after Reconstruction...Williamss superlative interpretation of African American responses to racial violence should be read by all interested in the histories of American lynching and the African American experience."-Michael J. Pfeifer,American Historical Review
Review
"Williams has offered a fascinating new approach to the study of mob violence and provided a richer understanding of African American experiences under white supremacy."-Journal of American History,
Review
"Her work succeeds admirably, particularly in its demonstration that the best sources for historians to study racial violence come directly from the mouths of the African Americans who survived it."-Journal of American Ethnic History,
Review
"Williams analyzes one means by which African Americans resisted the brutalities of white violence from 1865 through the 1920s and the impact of this activity to support the subsequent successes of the post-WWII civil rights movements. Highly recommended."-E.R. Crowther,CHOICE
Synopsis
Shares wrenching accounts of the everyday violence experienced by emancipated African Americans
Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings, and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress.
In this evocative and deeply moving history Kidada Williams examines African Americans' testimonies about racial violence. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, victims and witnesses hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence and inspire Americans to take action to end it. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed, as well as the identities that grew from the experience of violence. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement.
Synopsis
Synopsis
Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings, and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress. In this evocative and deeply moving history Kidada Williams examines African Americans testimonies about racial violence. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, victims and witnesses hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence and inspire Americans to take action to end it. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed, as well as the identities that grew from the experience of violence. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement.
About the Author
Jean Bricmont is professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, Belgium. He is the author of
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science (with Alan Sokal) and other political and scientific publications.
Diana Johnstoneis a distinguished researcher and commentator on contemporary global politics. She is the author of The Politics of Euromissiles: Europes Role in Americas World (Verso, 1985). Her writings have been published in New Left Review, Counterpunch, and Covert Action Quarterly.