This is one of the few books I have recieved in the last year that I have cast into the category “a difficult read”. This is not a common category in my case, but some books end there.
Another case is Elliot Sober: Evidence and evolution, 2008. In both cases I wonder, is it necessary to present the arguments in such a convoluted and difficult way. I tend to put them down, after reading some sentences. Although both authors have important things on their mind.
This may be just my limited reception, I will get back, but it remains my early impression of these works.Norrie, for example, seems unenlightened considering gender studies. On page 132 he restates his general position, discussing how Bhaskar’s philosophy coincides with that of Habermas, figuring “equality, liberty and fraternity” as main agent – with no further reflection concerning the possibly quite slanted ideal of “fraternity”, although he does mention that “feminists” have had something to say here .
Douglas J. Futuyma’s Evolution is an impressive work on many accounts, well provided pedagogically with colour illustrations and examples, interesting to read.
The research sensibility and evaluation seems good. Mainly, this book has a lot of new information, conveniently ordered, and often (but not always) well explained. More to follow.
Englund, Peter 2008
Stridens skønhet och sorg. Førsta varldskriget i 212 korta kapittel
Atlantis, Varnamo
For understanding the last part of the 20th century, including the second world war, the earlier part including the first world war remains an enigmatic background. Here is a good research-based update, written to get the reader into the mood of 1914-18, by a pioneer Swedish historian. I have read the first third of the book, and although it is a bit too wordy, it gives a good picture.
Gene Wolfe is one of the main voices of science fiction today. Watching current world news, especially the democratic struggles in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, I could not help thinking of his torturer and torture society portraits (e g The Shadow of the Torturer, 1980), and I have ordered two of his newer books, volume one (On blues) of a trilogy, and a historical work (Latro in the mist). We shall see. Whatever I read, from now on, is more influenced by the perspectives of Edward Said, Jonathan Littell, Victor Serge and other authors widening my understanding of democracy, some of them described in this blog.
PS A good introduction to Edward Said (e g Culture and imperialism, 1993) and post-imperialist culture, as it currently applies to the “Arab” world system issue, is Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization (2006). For understanding more of the crucial “dignity” aspect, cf. Evelin Lindner and others on dignity and humiliation: http://www.humiliationstudies.org/
On humiliation, see further harassment and mobbing research – this is a wide research area. For world system theory cf Immanuel Wallerstein.
The story of the battle ship Tirpitz is interesting, showing how some objects can become “prestige objects” in warfare, and in the background, how this is also a gendered story. The German battle ship Tirpitz was a great hope of the Nazis, but never made it as a ship of war – the performance was extremely weak, mainly, one bit of North Sea battling, and a single “disciplinary” trip to Svalbard. The German sea command was relatively new, weak, and seems to have been relatively non-nazified, and for this and various reasons including prestige, the potentially great war hammer Tirpitz was allowed to lay dormant, mainly, until the ship was destroyed by allied forces aircraft near Tromsø late in the war. A main interesting point is how something can become a fetish, even in practical warfare. Tirpitz was in fact a moderate military threat, yet all parties acted as if it was the big thug (see Tamelander, Michael; Zetterling, Niklas 2010: Tirpitz – kampen om Nordishavet, Spartacus, Oslo).
The “macho” exploits to destroy the ship may seem absurd, including one-man uboats in the Trondheim fjord, daredevil bomber flights, and other devices that lost a lot of men. They were not so strange however, considering the key importance of the convoy traffic to Murmansk and the western help to the Soviet Union. Even as a “moderate” threat, basically since Tirpitz was a battle ship and not an aircraft carrier design, it could count for much in this context. The Tirpitz evidence is interesting for showing how hard-line evidence can be mainly sensible and right, based on very real needs of the situation – and yet be wrong.
A new report by Gary Barker and co-researchers, Evolving Men – Initial Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), published by The International Center for Research on Women, Washington, shows changing standards regarding men and masculinity. Men increasingly embrace gender equal ideals and translate this into practices, but are held back by traditional roles and structures. Men’s own choices play a large role, but at the same time, structures and constraints are a key to understand these choices.
The IMAGES survey was to a large degree based on Norwegian research (p 64-5). This is a case of rich world research used to wider benefit, and an example of how Norwegian research can become internationalized.
I am reading Susan Weissman’s Victor Serge – The course is set on hope (Verso, London 2001), a remarkable book on many accounts, not least showing more of the Stalinist purge in Russia and abroad. Serge was a Russian Bolshevik who was also a relative free-thinker, barely escaping Stalin’s purges, publishing a lot of comments and experiences. Serge documented what was possibly the first holocaust, or the overlooked twin of the holocaust of the Jews later – the systematic large scale death campaign against “rival” revolutionary factions, especially Trotskyists, but in fact everyone daring to gainsay Stalin.
Serge was sympathetic to Trotsky, but developed doubts, and characterizes the authoritarian tendencies of Stalin’s opponents also. A main matter is the documentation regarding the purge of the revolutionaries in Russia. Serge wrote that there was scarcely an “old” comrade left – they had all been imprisoned or killed by Stalin. Serge did not use the word holocaust, but he did argue that Stalinism created perhaps the bloodiest counter-revolution in history, killing off all the opponents.
This book is mainly about Serge’s biography, with limited citations from his writings, but very valuable nevertheless. Especially interesting is Serge’s portrait of the way that the Stalinist pressure increased authoritarian tendencies even within the opposition.
Highly recommended.
I have finished reading Jonathan Littell’s The kindly ones, 1026 pages in the Norwegian translation, a remarkable book, even if I retain some scepticism on the psychology level. SS officers need not be personal killers, like the protagonist in this book, yet Littell’s way of treating this theme can also be seen as a way for creative literature to make its voice heard, to create an experimental field – and as such, very interesting.
The last part of the book contains a scathing critique of the idea that the Nazi gas chamber and elimination strategy was only directed against the Jews. It was directed against everyone “inferior” in Nazi race terms, the Jews were only the first victims. Empirically, in some contexts, the proportion of communists killed may have been as large as the proportion of Jews, and the main strategical matter was to eliminate everyone who were opposed to the new order.
Littell thereby also goes beyond David Goldhagen’s thesis that the holocaust was about the Jews and that more or less “any” German supported it. Littell’s fiction portrait of Nazi power basically willing to eliminate all opposition is more realistic. Goldhagen’s idea that almost every German was behind this, is not directly addressed by Littell, but is – mainly correct, I think – undermined by his storytelling, showing how even SS officers had a lot of private doubt and problems regarding the killing machine that they participated in.
Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favourite storytellers, stretching from Californian light to Mars explorations, and he does not disappoint, this time. The book travels a difficult terrain for a sf writer, the historical novel, but there, Robinson excels, giving Galileo flesh and blood, a very good (and possibly quite accurate) portrait. The weakest parts of the book are actually the sf parts, although they do serve their main function of dragging Galileo into a wider debate on enlightenment and democratization. What if Galileo had been burned at the stake? The threat was very real. The world could have been much more religious-dogmatic than it became. Robinson’s speculations here are high value even if his sci-fi concept is a bit thin. This is a good historical novel “plus”.
OK I admit I am guilty. I put this book on the shelf for two years, despite getting a copy as a gift (from Preben Z. Møller). I am a delayed reader of this bestseller. Why?
I did not want a muddle of postmodern thinking and real fact (I thought). I already had a large shelf, three meters total, literature from World War II, including much on Hitler and the German build up. It was only when I got the same book this Christmas, from my son, that I got round to actually read the thousand pages block of a book. I had practical family experience also – my mother, having to flee to Sweden, my uncles, one of them successfully fleeing persecution to join the Norwegian resistance, the other not. My uncle Johan was caught and almost perished in Sachsenhausen.
So did I have to read all this again?
Turned out, yes. I could no longer put it on hold.
The book is so good that it complements rather than detracts from my collection of war histories and memories. It goes into the head of an SS officer serving at the Eastern front, becoming a specialist in the killing of people. It is mainly very realistic, not sensationalist, and when it does go in with a literary angle, it is thought out and demarcated.
My uncle Johan who served in Sachsenhausen is dead now, as is my uncle Eric who joined the resistance, but I feel this book would have been important for them. Also personally, in the way that Littel goes into the social psychology of the violence, and the inner resistance against the Nazi thinking. This inner resistance existed – although it was overwhelmed.
My mother Harriet Holter, fleeing to Sweden because of Nazi persecution, often said, later – never forget, the struggle was against the Nazis – not Germans as such. My father, Ingemund Gullvåg, serving in allied convoy protection to Murmansk, a lifeline in the war, agreed. The Nazi system was the enemy, not the Germans.
Norway did not want violence. We were announced as Arians, a white billing, and yet attacked by the Germans in April 1940. It was a shock. Norwegian scholars, especially Kristian Ottosen, have recorded the makeup of the Nazi punishment system, perhaps more clearly than anyone else.
Littell’s work does not give any easy answer “why did Germans support the Holocaust”. Instead, it gives a view of the whole context – including not only revenge-tuned society, but also a “black pedagogy” in Alice Miller’s terms. The Holocaust was a result not only of bad social structure but also of authoritarian socialization. Much can be said about this – but Littel’s picture is convincing.
It is both a pain and a pleasure to get through this book, as it should be. What amazes is that there is scarcely a word too much, or a paragraph without a purpose. A crash course in aggression, in regressive politics, and the male mind – with women contributing too.
Many people, after World War 2, kept silent. Littell puts the silence frequency to the extreme, so to speak, portraying a Nazi officer as a killer, hidden in the background. The truth, or just some of it? History will judge, but there is evidence e g regarding the “Reichsfuhrer” Himmler pointing in the same direction. Himmler, Eichman and Littell’s fictious officer Aue were all very rational killers, not emotional at all, but their killing did have a personal dimension. This is where Littell goes a bit ahead of the currently established evidence, with mixed results, though his attempts to lead the way in this dark and obscured landscape are very important and worthy.
