War, violence, and the modern condition
Huppauf, Bernd (ed)
Walter de Gruyter (1997)
In Collection
#37
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Lit Crit
Hardcover 3110147025
Product Details
Nationality German
Pub Place Berlin
Dust Jacket no
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Read It Yes
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Conflict 20th Century Misc.
Notes
Bernd Hüppauf, professor and chair of the department of Germanic languages and literatures at New York University According to Professor Hüppauf, recent scholarship suggests that the world has never seen a region or a period without violence; therefore our idea of violence as an aberration, a deviation from the path of normality, is a profound error.

"In all previous cultures it [violence] appears to have been accepted as part of a natural or God-given order. Violent acts were endemic and normal," says Professor Hüppauf. "We cannot hope to solve the problem of escalating violence until we have redefined the concept of violence and changed our perception of it."

War, Violence and the Modern Condition explores the specific role which violence has played in the constitution of the modern mentality. It is divided into three distinct but related parts: one dealing with issues of conceptualizing war, violence and modernity/modernism; one devoted to issues of the First World War, where the dividing line between war and peace was blurred; and one concerned with issues of violence and its representation in the aftermath of the first modern war and up to the present.

Much of the book is based on an NYU conference, held in 1993, which focused on the omnipresence of violence at century's end, in towns and cities, within families, between social, ethnic, religious and racial groups and because of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Essays include: "The Therapeutic Response: Continuities from World War One to National Socialism," by Frank Trommler, University of Pennsylvania; "Sexy Nazis and Daddy's Girls: Fascism and Sexuality in Film and Video since the 1970s" by Andrea Slane; "Women in the Military and the Cult of Masculinity" by Phillip D'Alton; and "Laws of War and Revolution" by Wolf Kittler, University of California at Santa Barbara.