Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia - Softcover

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156584209X ISBN 13: 9781565842090

Publisher: The New Press, 1995

Synopsis

In Civil Wars, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Germany’s most astute literary and political critic, chronicles the global changes taking place as the result of evolving notions of nationalism, loyalty, and community. Enzensberger sees similar forces at work around the world, from America’s racial uprisings in Los Angeles to the outright carnage in the former Yugoslavia. He argues that previous approaches to class or generational conflict have failed us, and that we are now confronted with an “autism of violence”: a tendency toward self-destruction and collective madness.

About this title

About the Author:

Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Bavaria in 1929. One of the leading social critics in Germany, his essays have appeared in a wide range of journals. He is the author of Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, Europe, The Consciousness Industry, Political Crumbs, Politics and Crime, and, most recently, The Number Devil. He lives in Munich, Germany

From Publishers Weekly:

"Which is stranger: killing people you know, or destroying an opponent you have absolutely no conception of?" asks Enzensberger (Europe, Europe), who points out that civil war is nothing new; "cultivated" war between nations is the "relatively recent" development in the span of human history. But with the end of the Cold War, the world seems to have erupted in mindlessly violent conflicts whose "autistic" combatants come to resemble each other as they self-destruct, asserts the author. Extending this generalization, the well-known German political and literary critic unconvincingly likens gang warfare in U.S. inner cities to the present Bosnian civil war, viewing both as acts of collective self-mutilation. But this uneven essay contains more rewarding insights, as when Enzensberger observes that more and more people are being permanently excluded from the world economic system or argues that, instead of blaming the West for its poverty, the Third World must hold accountable the indigenous "political gangster classes" that have been looting their own countries for decades.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 156584209X
• ISBN 13: 9781565842090
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144