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Punishment is the imposition, by a legitimate authority, of a
painful consequence upon one who has offended the social order by
indulging in acts contrary to the social good. Punishment is
understood to serve a primary objective in any society: it
rehabilitates or reforms (re-forms or shapes anew) the psyches of
social offenders to bring them in line with prevailing codes of
behavior. Punishment thus is a highly conservative force, affirming
simultaneously the codes of conduct deemed desirable within the
society and the status quo of power relations that hold sway in the
society. Punishment is a form of social teaching. One of the
favorite forms of didactic pain to which legitimate authorities
turn, in teaching conformity to social regulations, is the
psychological pain of shame. Shame is a special favorite in the
penology of societies of the Western world, whose governing logic
is already grounded in the shame-based religions of Judaism and
Christianity. Parents, school teachers, religious leaders, and
state authorities readily employ shame as an effective method for
teaching social lessons. Shame is a powerful force that reaches
deep into the psyche of the offender and gnaws away at her sense of
self-worth and identity, with longstanding and devastating
existential effects. Shame has profound and enduring effects,
because it has the capacity to transform an empirical fact (of
having done something unacceptable) into an ontological reality (of
being unacceptable as a human being). Shame dehumanizes. Shame is a
powerfully effective tool for altering behavior, but because shame
dehumanizes, it often fails to have the effect that the punisher is
seeking to bring about. Shame sickens souls, rather than cures
them. It sickens them to such a degree that shame more often acts
as a promoter of criminality than as a teacher of the social good.
Punishment is the imposition, by a legitimate authority, of a
painful consequence upon one who has offended the social order by
indulging in acts contrary to the social good. Punishment is
understood to serve a primary objective in any society: it
rehabilitates or reforms (re-forms or shapes anew) the psyches of
social offenders to bring them in line with prevailing codes of
behavior. Punishment thus is a highly conservative force, affirming
simultaneously the codes of conduct deemed desirable within the
society and the status quo of power relations that hold sway in the
society. Punishment is a form of social teaching. One of the
favorite forms of didactic pain to which legitimate authorities
turn, in teaching conformity to social regulations, is the
psychological pain of shame. Shame is a special favorite in the
penology of societies of the Western world, whose governing logic
is already grounded in the shame-based religions of Judaism and
Christianity. Parents, school teachers, religious leaders, and
state authorities readily employ shame as an effective method for
teaching social lessons. Shame is a powerful force that reaches
deep into the psyche of the offender and gnaws away at her sense of
self-worth and identity, with longstanding and devastating
existential effects. Shame has profound and enduring effects,
because it has the capacity to transform an empirical fact (of
having done something unacceptable) into an ontological reality (of
being unacceptable as a human being). Shame dehumanizes. Shame is a
powerfully effective tool for altering behavior, but because shame
dehumanizes, it often fails to have the effect that the punisher is
seeking to bring about. Shame sickens souls, rather than cures
them. It sickens them to such a degree that shame more often acts
as a promoter of criminality than as a teacher of the social good.
Western civilization is founded upon the assumption that there
exists a "natural order" to the world, an embedded principle of
justice with which human reason is aligned. The imagery is
seductive. However, Emil Fackenheim raises a troubling fact in his
To Mend the World when he names the Holocaust the "rupture that
ruptures philosophy." The Holocaust and countless other horrors
over thousands of years of eager philosophical pursuit could not
order the troublesome human soul to that state of justice that the
Plato claims to be the most natural and happy state of human
beings, if they can simply know their best interests. The
philosopher, physician to the human soul, has proven impotent in
healing the open ethical wound of human inhumanity; worse, the
grand ontological and epistemological structures that philosophers
have constructed may be linked to the ethical failures of the
planet, to colonial and imperial worldviews. The work of
post-Holocaust phenomenologist, Emmanuel Levinas, is written under
the somber backdrop of the Holocaust. Levinas, by his own
admission, stages a return to Plato. He shares Plato's sense of
ethical urgency in the philosophical task, but he sets course for a
new Platonism that thinks the difference separating (rather than
the unity gathering) being. Levinas, more than Plato, appreciates
that the exigencies and labor of everyday life can eclipse the
needs of others and waylay the ethical life. Levinas too holds out
more hope than Plato that the worst human beings can simply forget
themselves and their self-interested projects, and become their
brothers' keepers. Levinas quests for the good beyond being as he
challenges the tradition of Western thought and the post-Holocaust
world to a new ethos: we must decide between the starry skies above
(the ordered ontologies of the Western tradition) and the moral law
within. The Lesser Good represents a timely consideration of the
ethical exigencies of human life, politics, and justice,
demonstrating that philosophy's fa
Savage Constructions composes a critical examination of the popular
assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain ethnic
or racial populations. Wendy Hamblet challenges the supposition,
all too common in the West, that darker-skinned peoples are
inherently violent. To challenge this myth, Savage Constructions
offers a theory of subjectivity transformed by historical violence.
It rethinks how African peoples, once living in simple neighborly
communities more democratic and egalitarian than modern states,
have come to the condition of abjection, misery, and fierce
aggression, in which we find them today. This rethinking she argues
that Western affluence is built upon slaughter, slavery, and
colonial oppression, and suggests that prosperous nations of the
West owe a great debt to the societies they trampled en route to
their prosperity. This work is important because Nnewly independent
nations of Africa are a primary example of a much vaster
phenomenon. Western powers continue to sack poorer, weaker
countries through covert intrigue, outright war, crippling debts,
and unfair global labor and trade policies. The violences continue
because many Westerners still harbor metaphysical assumptions about
the supremacy of white Christians over less "civilized,"
darker-skinned peoples. These assumptions depress the possibilities
of ethnic minorities within the West, continue to influence foreign
policy and frustrate global relations, and ensure that the
overwhelming collateral damage of modern wars is color conscious.
Savage Constructions will appeal to all levels of scholars and
students.
Savage Constructions composes a critical examination of the popular
assumption that violence is an essential quality of certain ethnic
or racial populations. Wendy Hamblet challenges the supposition,
all too common in the West, that darker-skinned peoples are
inherently violent. To challenge this myth, Savage Constructions
offers a theory of subjectivity transformed by historical violence.
It rethinks how African peoples, once living in simple neighborly
communities more democratic and egalitarian than modern states,
have come to the condition of abjection, misery, and fierce
aggression, in which we find them today. This rethinking she argues
that Western affluence is built upon slaughter, slavery, and
colonial oppression, and suggests that prosperous nations of the
West owe a great debt to the societies they trampled en route to
their prosperity. This work is important because Nnewly independent
nations of Africa are a primary example of a much vaster
phenomenon. Western powers continue to sack poorer, weaker
countries through covert intrigue, outright war, crippling debts,
and unfair global labor and trade policies. The violences continue
because many Westerners still harbor metaphysical assumptions about
the supremacy of white Christians over less 'civilized,'
darker-skinned peoples. These assumptions depress the possibilities
of ethnic minorities within the West, continue to influence foreign
policy and frustrate global relations, and ensure that the
overwhelming collateral damage of modern wars is color conscious.
Savage Constructions will appeal to all levels of scholars and
students.
Wedding an analysis of relevant anthropological literature and
philosophical theory, this important book re-positions violence
long trivialized by philosophers as an incidental or anomalous
feature of humanity as a central concern for ethical thought. Wendy
Hamblet focuses on a fundamental paradox that emerges when
well-meaning communities and individuals attempt to implement their
ideals in our social, or socialized, world. Very often the
unintended consequences of these individual or communal ideals run
headlong into the brute fact of bloody human engagement. Through
her investigation of violence-legitimization in myth and ancient
tales, philosophical accounts (from Plato to Nietzsche), the
concept of home as 'refuge, ' and recent social scientific data,
Hamblet takes up the charge that violence is steeped in our being
it pervades human history and is embedded in the ethos of our
modern institutions and gives us essential tools for better
understanding how violence actually operates."
Wedding an analysis of relevant anthropological literature and
philosophical theory, this important book re-positions
violence--long trivialized by philosophers as an incidental or
anomalous feature of humanity--as a central concern for ethical
thought. Wendy Hamblet focuses on a fundamental paradox that
emerges when well-meaning communities and individuals attempt to
implement their ideals in our social, or socialized, world. Very
often the unintended consequences of these individual or communal
ideals run headlong into the brute fact of bloody human engagement.
Through her investigation of violence-legitimization in myth and
ancient tales, philosophical accounts (from Plato to Nietzsche),
the concept of home as 'refuge, ' and recent social scientific
data, Hamblet takes up the charge that violence is steeped in our
being--it pervades human history and is embedded in the ethos of
our modern institutions--and gives us essential tools for better
understanding how violence actually operates
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