[From the publisher] From intimate
relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a
continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid
accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and
Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of
scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment
replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why
difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting
the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman
illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious,
racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their
self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized
behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate
difference.
This important and
sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and
historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference
as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment,
whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our
families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or
Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the
cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how
those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the
"other" to achieve their goals.
