Violent Man Research Articles

This Creature Smothered in Death Clothes: Twenty Notes on Violence

This Creature Smothered in Death ClothesTwenty Notes on Violence Douglas Smith (bio) 1 Even our gods can be murdered. Think of Osiris, his body torn apart and scattered across the earth. Then follow Isis, who sailed after grief on a boat of papyrus. Gathering the limbs of Osiris, Isis made the dead god live. She has other names, other powers, but this morning I will call her poet. 2 Our fugitive world is elusive, always. The human mind cannot apprehend it. Everything hidden abides as the order of the day, the week, the year. “The artist’s problem,” Frank Bidart argues, “is to make life show itself.” 3 What we desire is revelation. Tell me, then, of Achilles, the way his spear pierces the “tender” flesh of Hektor’s neck. Or conduct me through the vast architecture of torture in Dante’s vision of hell. Or let me stand with the three murderers in Macbeth. “It will be rain to-night,” Banquo says, approaching his own death. “Let it come down,” the First Murderer replies. 4 To say that violence leads to revelation is to shiver. How can this be true? 5 The occasion of a poem can summon violence and contest it at once. See Paul Celan, the great poet of destruction, to confirm. 6 Try to write a brief catechism on violence. You will never complete it. 7 Look instead at a violent man made of words. His name is Herbert White, and his crimes are many. Frank Bidart calls him a “creature smothered in death clothes.” [End Page 135] 8 Find him, this man who kills “to make meaning,” in the first poem in Bidart’s first book. Here is a haunted voice. Here is a world confused. 9 “Herbert White” begins with a trapdoor: “‘When I hit her on the head, it was good.’” 10 “Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself,” Iris Murdoch wrote. Remember this sentence during our descent into Herbert White’s mind: “When I hit her on the head, it was good, and then I did it to her a couple of times,—but it was funny,—afterwards,it was as if somebody else did it . . . Everything flat, without sharpness, richnessor line.” 11 There, in the forest, standing above the body of a murdered girl, Herbert White is a figure of dread, and the manner of his voice shakes the reader. What is the fruit of such language? “—It sounds crazy, but I tell yousometimes it was beautiful—; I don’t know howto say it, but for a minute, everything was possible—;and then,then,— well, like I said, she didn’t move: and I saw,under me, a little girl was just lying there in the mud: and I knew I couldn’t have done that,—somebody else had to have done that,—” [End Page 136] 12 The world, for Herbert White, is both impediment and provocation. The past, including a difficult father, is the same. “—You see, ever since I was a kid I wantedto feel things make sense: I remember looking out the window of my room back home,—and being almost suffocated by the asphalt;and grass; and trees; and glass;just there, just there, doing nothing!not saying anything! filling me up—but also being a wall; dead, and stopping me;—how I wanted to see beneath it, cut beneath it, and make itsomehow, come alive . . .” 13 To make it come alive: the monster and the poet share this desire. “Cracking the shell of the world,” Bidart suggests, can lead to revelation, and writers often make this happen “by dramatizing crisis and disaster.” 14 The crisis of Herbert White’s mind disturbs his world. This is the ruin of thought, and the reader serves as witness. “—Naturally, I just got right back in the car,and believe me, was determined, determined,to head straight for home . . . but the more I drove,I kept thinking about getting a girl,and the more I thought I shouldn’t do it, the more I had to— [End Page 137] I saw her coming out of the movies,saw she was alone, and...

African American Wounds: Broken Memories and the Traumatic Outcome of Racist Stereotypes in Bernice L. McFadden's Gathering of Waters

The haltingly dark past of the United States has proved to be utterly decisive in the formation of an unalloyed epistemology for African Americans. The blatant racism relegated them to the margins of the young nation ever since its foundation. Thus, trauma and sorrow have evolved into challenging concepts which overlap taking into account the transnational and transcultural memory of a considerable part of the African American population. Drawing on the concept of trauma as proposed by critics such as Cathy Caruth or Dominick LaCapra, this article analyzes Bernice L. McFadden's novel Gathering of Waters, published in 2013, as a literary account of the aftermaths that result from the traumatic experiences that African American population have historically had to put up with. Namely, I contend that the racist stereotypes of the lustful Jezebel and the myth of the ‘buck' as a violent and virile black man have a direct impact in the tragic destiny that falls upon the main characters Tass Hilson and Emmett Till respectively. I submit that Tass' meandering into madness and the eventual assassination of Emmett Till are blunt results of the interiorization of the racist stereotypes that white America created to justify the violence impinged on African Americans. The novel totters beautifully and tragically on the precipice of the traumatic past to explain the racial nightmares of contemporary North America and nurtures readers to digest the broken soul of black Americans.

The Ditch

The Ditch Paul Ruffin (bio) I’ll begin by telling you outright that I am not a violent man. But there are times when all the talk and reason in the world won’t address a threat that’s coming at you. When I was younger, I didn’t mind getting into scrapes when some kid messed with me. My philosophy was to walk softly and carry a big fist to knock the shit out of my opponent—not exactly an acceptable political slogan—which meant to conduct the fight, if it had to come, with one swift blow to the nose. If you do it right, all the lights in the house will come on in your adversary’s head when your fist strikes, and he will be blinded to the point of buckling to the ground, wondering what universe all those new stars are from, and generally the lights will dim real low or go completely out. The first time it happened, second grade maybe, a much older boy on the schoolbus kept turning around in his seat and poking me in the shoulder, and all I wanted was for the bus to get me home and away from him. But as the bus ground up the long gravel road toward our mailbox, it seemed forever in making the grade, so I just flung a fist as hard as I could at the kid’s nose, and when it smacked home, it didn’t hurt me at all, but he slid down off his seat onto the floor, with blood spurting all over. The driver knew that he was a bully and didn’t say anything to me. But he winked at me as I left the bus. It happened again three years later, when a kid stole my bike and messed up the chain. One blow to the nose. The thing about going after the nose is that you don’t come away with skinned knuckles or broke fingers—the nose just caves in, flattens. No bone there. Nothing but soft nose. You can hit a guy all day in the mouth or upside the head, [End Page 535] and likely as not, he’ll keep coming at you, and you’re gonna end up hurting your fist on teeth or bone. Land your fist dead-on on the nose, and all he wants is to shake those stars out of his head, forget the pain, and breathe again or go to sleep. And if you do it properly, his nose will swell up like a damned ripe tomato and both his eyes will go black, and you are not likely ever to have to deal with him again. What I’m saying is, it beats the shit out of any other kind of blow that you can deliver. A couple of years after that bike incident, I did it again when I hammered the boy next door for accusing my daddy of poisoning dogs, even when he was telling the truth. It wasn’t nice, I told him as he cupped his bleeding nose and tried to get to the safety of his house before I followed up the blow. If you do it right the first time, there is no need to follow up. My childhood confrontations were always conducted the same way with the same effect. After the age of fifteen or so, I never fought again. For one thing, my reputation was such that most kids wouldn’t dare mess with me. For another, I became more tolerant of the dumbasses of the world. I figured that most of them didn’t have the sense to breathe and stayed alive only because Nature made it impossible for them to die from not taking a breath. I always thought it was a shame that Nature had to fling that wide a net. I mean, dogs and cats and horses and cows and the wilder animals, sure, it’s OK for them to do dumb shit from time to time, but lots of people I knew didn’t deserve that kind of break. I’m telling you, there are some dumbass people out there, and...

The Limits of White Memory: Slavery, Violence and the Amistad Incident

This article addresses the Amistad incident, and the evolving way this event was viewed by Connecticut journalists and residents; an examination of the language used in contemporary newspapers reveals why the Amistad story was largely forgotten in popular imagination in the United States until the 1980s, and completely forgotten in Sierra Leone, the homeland of the captives. The Amistad displayed the nation's most racist beliefs, along with its worst fears, in Connecticut newspaper accounts, accounting for the discomfort with which Southerners in particular regarded the case. The rebellious African kidnap victims were exotic visitors to Connecticut, eliciting much commentary about the “ignoble savages” who might be cannibals, but most certainly seemed to be murderers with insight and intellect; more troubling, they were men – this seemed indisputable – and they were fighting courageously and against the odds for their own freedom, the pivotal American value. In a culture that evaluated savagery visually, there was much to identify as “savage,” but, nonetheless, as the Africans came to reside in Connecticut awaiting their trial, they became human beings, with their own voices, recorded in newspaper accounts. They acquired names, translators, Western clothing, English and Bible lessons, transforming their threatening black masculinity into the only image acceptable to white America, “the suffering servant”; in spite of the pro-slavery newspaper portrayal of the Africans as being lazy, inarticulate in English, mendacious slave-traders, a deliberate process of “heroification” of Cinque was occurring. These competing stereotypes of black man as supplicating victim versus black man as intelligent, violently forceful agent of his own fate were difficult for Lewis Tappan and his fellow abolitionists to navigate. The images also brought into question the value of “moral suasion” as a tool, especially when white Americans were faced with the reality of a strong, potentially violent African man. The Supreme Court decision freed the African captives, but set no precedent for future cases, and it did not improve the lot of even one other enslaved soul; worse yet, the returned captives found no peace after their hard-won return to Africa, nor did they choose to maintain their Christianity, much to the disappointment of their American hosts. Furthermore, the unhappy postscript of the Africans' resettlement called into question the value of the colonization plans so beloved by activists.

Ned Kelly – Stock Thief, Bank Robber, Murderer – Psychopath

In his boyhood, Edward “Ned” Kelly began “lifting” cattle and horses. His early convictions included assault (1870), “feloniously receiving a horse” (1870) and resisting arrest (1877). On 15 April 1878, a lone police constable who visited the Kelly home to arrest Dan Kelly for horse theft later alleged that Ned Kelly shot and wounded him and that he had been assaulted by Kelly's family members. With a warrant for his arrest on a charge of attempted murder, in October 1878, Kelly and his gang ambushed and shot dead three policemen in remote bushland near Mansfield. On 1 November 1878, as a result of the Felons’ Apprehension Act, the Kelly gang were proclaimed “outlaws” and initially rewards of £200 for each was offered alive or dead. After robbing banks in Euroa and Jerilderie in NSW, and murdering a police informant, Kelly and his gang planned to derail a special train carrying police and black-trackers. The derailment was averted and police laid siege as sixty hostages huddled inside the Glenrowan Hotel. Kelly always claimed that he and his family had been victimised by police and that he had been driven to lawlessness. Many historians and authors have attempted to make connections between the Kelly gang outbreak and social conflicts of the period. However, a close examination of his developmental history and subsequent criminal behaviour reveals that Kelly was a violent and vindictive man who demonstrated prominent psychopathic features including pathological lying, callous lack of empathy for others and a parasitic lifestyle. As Kelly terrorised country Victoria, he showed little concern other than for his own gratification and self-justification. Kelly's own florid diatribes and correspondence further illuminate his grandiose sense of self-worth and his inability to accept responsibility for his criminality.

‘The woman was deceived and became a sinner’ – a literary-theological investigation of 1 Timothy 2:11–15

In 1 Timothy 2:11–15 women are forbidden to teach and have authority over men in the church. The ground for this instruction is the creation account in Genesis 2 that asserts the priority of Adam over Eve in the order of creation. The second reason for the instruction is the deception of Eve according to the account of the Fall in Genesis 3. This pericope has elicited arguments between advocates of egalitarianism and complementarianism revolving over the issues of grammar, the context of the Ephesian church with regard to false teachings and the comparison of this text with the other writings of Paul, for those that subscribe to the authorship of Paul. The contention of this article is that verse 15 provides a major clue as to how this text should be understood. In addition, the author’s rhetoric in this text is interrogated with regard to the text’s own internal literary and theological logic. In this regard, the author is found to be inconsistent in his outlook, for the grace that was poured out abundantly on him: a blasphemer, a persecutor and a violent man and on account of his ignorance andunbelief (1 Tm 1:12–16) is apparently, being denied women on account of Eve’s deception.

Nobody but Us by Kristin Halbrook (review)

Reviewed by: Nobody but Us by Kristin Halbrook Karen Coats Halbrook, Kristin. Nobody but Us. HarperTeen, 2013. [304p]. Paper ed. ISBN 978-0-06-212126-4 $9.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-212127-1 $8.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7–10. Zoe falls for Will because he doesn’t look away from the bruises her father gives her, bruises that everyone else in her small town has been ignoring for fifteen years. Having been reared in foster care his whole life, Will has his own violent past, and when he ages out of the system, he decides to leave North Dakota for Vegas and take Zoe with him. Their flight is marred, however, by one last fight with Zoe’s father and by Will’s theft of a thousand dollars from the leader of his group home. Likely warrants for his arrest for assault and robbery and the fact that Zoe is under-age keep Will looking behind him, even while he assures Zoe that they are finally free to do whatever they want. Though Zoe is naïve, she does eventually realize that she is trading one violent man for another in her quest for someone to take care of her and that it’s time for her to think about taking care of herself. Still, she loves Will, and she struggles to get him to open up to her, which he does as a test to see how much knowledge about his past she can bear and still love him. Will’s and Zoe’s stories are broadly melodramatic and clichéd, and their inexorable march to the point of no return is largely predictable. The language is quite beautiful, however, with chapters alternating between Zoe’s intelligent, wistful longing and Will’s blunt and hard-edged but equally poignant need. Readers in difficult situations will definitely get the message that escape isn’t always the best alternative, and that true love, the kind that bears all things, isn’t enough to outweigh bad choices. The sad fate of Will and Zoe, however, may ultimately inspire readers to choose better for themselves. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Writing & Publishing a Memoir: What in the Hell Have I Done?

Writing & Publishing a Memoir:What in the Hell Have I Done? Andre Dubus III (bio) It was early September at a college in upstate New York. The maples in the quad were still in full bloom, and the grass was clipped and dozens of young men and women walked along the paved pathways, carrying books and backpacks, a cell phone in one hand, their iPod in the other, many of them with an earbud in one ear so they heard music on that side of their head while they carried on conversations on the other. I was there to give a talk to the entire incoming freshman class, all of whom had been sent a copy of my memoir, Townie. By nightfall it had begun to rain, and I'd just eaten dinner in a room of raised panels and deep carpet with twenty or so members of the faculty. Many carried umbrellas as we hurried across campus to the hall where I would give my talk. Like many published writers, I give a lot of talks. Sometimes to crowds, sometimes to small groups. Sometimes I'm nervous beforehand, other times I'm not. Tonight, I was nervous. Over five hundred eighteen-year-olds had just read all about my youth, and now I was expected to say something important to these young people, something that might inspire them as they began their first tentative steps into their college years. I was anticipating the kinds of students I often [End Page 41] encounter on campuses across the country, a baseball-cap wearing, gadget-addicted mix of earnestness and glazed distraction, of intense desire for something real and helpful and a standoffish world-weariness that comes not from the world itself but from far too many cyber-simulations of it. Whenever I'm in their presence, I feel a deep need to give them something worth showing up for, a story or a quote or a line of thought and feeling that comes from years of trying and failing and trying again to write truly about human beings—in this case, myself. But when we village elders stepped into the cavernous hall, nearly every seat taken by a young man or woman from various parts of the country, some from other parts of the world, something strange happened. We started walking down the aisle and I heard, "Hey, that's him." "Lookit, there he is." And then came applause, loud and sustained, then a few kids were standing up, and the applause grew louder. What was this? I kept moving to the front, but I was glancing around at these young faces. In so many of them was an expression of acknowledgment and recognition, many of them peering around others to get a closer look at me. And then it became clear what was happening; they weren't clapping for the middle-aged author of a book they'd been required to read; they were clapping for the boy and violent young man I'd been; they were clapping for the kid who'd grown into the man walking up to the stage to greet them; they were clapping not for Andre, the writer, but for Andre, the main character in a story called Townie. I may as well have been Jake Barnes or Harry Potter or Captain Queeg. And as I waited to be introduced, I stood there feeling as if I'd lied to them in some way, that I had somehow misrepresented myself. But had I? Yes. And no. Not at all. In my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts, the mill town where I grew up and the setting for Townie, I'm told it's referred to as "The Book." "Hey, have you read The Book?" "You shittin' me? I'm in The fucking Book." Just weeks after it was published, I was to give a reading at the Haverhill Public Library. Over five hundred people showed up. The [End Page 42] librarian introduced me, and there was enthusiastic applause, a few raucous whoops and shouts from the rear of the room. I looked out over the crowd and took them in. Many were my age, in their...

Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (review)

Anastasia Karakasidou, Wellesley CollegeThe recent violence in the Balkans has perplexed foreign analysts. The mainstream interpretation conjured images of the violent Balkan man and blamed atrocities on inherent national maladies. A few historical constructivist voices contextualized the violent events in world politics and emphasized how the peoples of the Balkans lived within or on the margins of empires. They consumed the images of aggression and brutality assigned to them by the West. Struggles to create a sense of collective identity outside of that domineering framework have been futile. Vampire Nation joins these constructivist voices, but offers a unique deconstruction of nationalism through a detailed textual analysis of the metaphor. Longinovic tells us how in 2007, a year after Slobodan Milosevic's death, a man visited his grave and planted a stake in the ground, a metaphorical second killing of sorts, making certain that the will never come back to haunt the living again. The culture and its connection to bloody Balkan history has indeed begged for an interpretation.Tomislav Longinovic grew up in Yugoslav Belgrade and has a unique perspective on society: not quite a detached ethnographer, nor a fully national participant, he critiques his own upbringing and writes an insightful analysis of the character of the nation. He chooses his informants from a wide range of fields and from throughout Balkan history, and analyzes a myriad of texts, films, plays, and orations. Although the work is reflexive, it is free from the insufferable self-reflections of the Western observer seeking local acceptance. The author is well-known from his previous writings on the metaphorical image of the vampire, but Vampire Nation is the first of his works that takes the leap into nationalism and stands as a critique of violence. The is a mythical creature with origins in the 17th century Balkans, and was well embedded in the magic and mysticism of daily life along with witches and werewolves. The was the worst demonic being of all, however, with an unsurpassed lust and thirst for blood. The stories circulated widely in western Europe as well, as did the images of the Slavs as the European other. On the far edges of civilized lands, these fearful people were perceived to be as violent as the magical creatures they themselves feared. The image of the Serbian vampire is rooted in these early European cosmologies: the Serbs are a backward, ancient people that feast on blood and fear the light of civilization. The Serbs, as Longinovic argues, had little choice but to conform to this assigned identity. They embraced it, but the Serbian vampire for internal consumption is quite different: he is a heroic figure, an individual who spills blood for the nation.Once with their own empire, the Serbs coexisted with the Byzantine Empire, but fell to Ottoman hands in the 14th century. Destabilized and without a territorial permanent base, the Serbs did not fully unite as a national collectivity until the rebellions against Ottoman rule in the early 19th century. The memory of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo united the Serbs and it was transformed into a mythical bloody battle between the invading Ottoman army and the Principality. The battle set up an ethnic memory of Orthodoxy against Islamic invaders and the defeat was considered to be a great loss for national and pride.Serbia became a republic within socialist Yugoslavia after World War II, but the cultural strength of the Serbs put them in an advantageous position within the Federation. Serbia was accused of having controlling interest in Yugoslavia, especially when leader Slobodan Milosevic became president of the ailing Federation. In 1991 Yugoslavia ceased to exist and the Yugoslav wars erupted, giving way to ethno-religious conflicts involving genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, internment camps, mass graves, and torture. …

Fear, Punishment, and InequalitySex Panic and the Punitive State. By Roger Lancaster. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Fear, Punishment, and Inequality<i>Sex Panic and the Punitive State</i>. By Roger Lancaster. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

Psychiatry in the cinema

The portrayal of mental illness in film has been a favorite topic of discussion on the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists listserv for many years. This movie review compares and contrasts two such films, one a classic (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and the other (Shutter Island) a relatively new addition to the filmographic registry of the psychiatric genre. Further, this review is provided from two different perspectivesthat of a veteran psychiatric pharmacist and a fourth year Pharm.D. student. Spoiler Alertif you have not seen these pictures, some significant aspects of the plot lines of both movies are revealed below.

Christopher Marlowe the craftsman: lives, stage and page

Contents: Introduction: Christopher Marlowe the craftsman: lives, stage, and page, Sarah K. Scott and M.L. Stapleton Part I Lives: Scholarship and Biography: Marlowe scholarship and criticism: the current scene, Robert A. Logan Marlowe thinking globally, Richard F. Hardin Reviewing what we think we know about Christopher Marlowe, again, J.A. Downie Was Marlowe a violent man?, Rosalind Barber. Part II Stage: Theater, Dramaturgy: Edward II and residual allegory, Alan C. Dessen What Shakespeare did to Marlowe in private: Dido, Faustus and Bottom, Meredith Skura The Jew of Malta and the development of city comedy: 'the mean passage of a history', Sarah K. Scott Speaking to the audience: direct address in the plays of Marlowe and his contemporaries, Ruth Lunney. Part III Pages: Texts and Interpretations: Marlowe the Ovidian: On the eventfulness of Hero and Leander, Stephen Booth Marlowe's first Ovid: Certaine of Ovids Elegies, M.L. Stapleton Marlowe and Marston's Cursus, Robert Darcy Marlowe's last poem: elegiac aesthetics and the epitaph on Sir Roger Manwood, Dympna Callaghan. Marlowe's Reach: Hell is Discovered: the Roman destination of Dr Faustus, Brett Foster Consuming sorrow: conversion and consumption in Tamburlaine: Part One, Carolyn Scott Fractional Faustus: Edward Alleyn's part in the printing of the A-text, Paul Menzer Bibliography Index.

Shadow Tag (review)

Reviewed by: Shadow Tag James Cihlar Shadow Tag. By Louise Erdrich. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 272 pages, $25.99. Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag could be read as a roman à clef, or just as easily as a novel of ideas. Portraying successful Native American characters who live in a Midwestern urban area, it also comments on the operation of culture at large, of zeitgeist. A bold, uncensored snapshot of a marriage in trouble, it nevertheless selectively presents only part of the story at any given time, deliberately skirting the full complexity of the situation. Fame and shame, image and appropriation, fate and free will battle it out between the covers. Divided into five sections, each shorter than the previous, suggesting an inexorable scaling back to essence, Shadow Tag traces the inevitable dissolution of a family. Meaning arises from happenstance, neglect, and coincidence in this elliptical yet driven narrative, and in that respect this book, despite its many surface differences to Erdrich's previous novels, engages in a significant dialogue with them. The story of Native American writer Irene America, who is researching nineteenth-century portrait artist George Catlin for her dissertation, and her husband Gil, an artist who has built a successful career from painting portraits of Irene, Shadow Tag abounds with distorted reflections, appropriated images, and eerie doubles. More simply, it shows a great but mystifying love between a disturbed and occasionally violent man and a woman who wants to escape for the sake of her children. Unfortunately, she can't fight the caretaker instinct within herself and let go of her potentially self-destructive man. [End Page 219] Although readers might be tempted to see art imitating life, Erdrich mischievously distorts her fictional representations, throwing in a few red herrings for good measure. For instance, just as we reflexively fall into the assumption that Irene is the fictive counterpart to the author, Erdrich introduces a character named Louise. In a sense, she's commenting on the reality that famous authors must maintain public images, even as they strive to protect individual privacy. In another nod to deliberate artifice, part two contains vicious, fanciful renditions of the couple's visits to a therapist, openly referred to by Gil as a "functionary." Similarly, in a climactic showdown, the family's housecat is described as disappearing "like a stage ghost" (226). In the end, part of the novel's achievement is to replace sensationalized reporting with a consciously crafted, artistic statement. Set in the Mount Curve neighborhood of Minneapolis, a wealthy enclave of historic mansions overlooking downtown, Shadow Tag portrays two prosperous, professional, urban, Midwestern Native Americans and their children, telling an echo story of the setting more often featured in Erdrich's novels, rural North Dakota. Shadow Tag is not the novel of stories that The Plague of Doves (2008) is nor does it mix narrative viewpoints to the extent of Love Medicine (1984). The plot is relatively linear, consisting largely of omniscient narrative fragments describing Irene's thoughts and actions. However, external textual elements inform and interrupt this narrative, as in Erdrich's previous novels, here in the form of diary excerpts. When Irene discovers that Gil secretly reads her private journal, rather than confront him with the truth she decides to falsify entries, so as to play with his head and throw him off his guard. Leaving this red notebook in its usual place, she opens up a safe deposit box at her local bank, where she writes her true feelings in a blue notebook. The notion of split selves recorded in color-coded journals is a sly nod to an important feminist novel, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (1962). Excerpts from these books, along with occasional shifts of focus to the three children—the youngest, Stoney; the oldest, Florian; and, notably, the middle child, Riel—borrow the collage method of Erdrich's previous novels. The narrative requires some of the same hunt-and-gather functions of the brain familiar to loyal readers. Shadow Tag is a collection of puzzle pieces Erdrich asks readers to solve. Irene excuses an extramarital affair with this explanation: "History is two things, after all. To have meaning, history must consist of...

A Better Life through Science?

A Better Life through Science? John D. Lantos (bio) There is a moment in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that brought tears to my eyes. Henrietta Lacks is the woman whose cervical tumor gave rise to a cell line—brand named HeLa—that became quite useful in many important lines of biomedical research. When the book’s author, Rebecca Skloot, tracks down Lacks’s descendents in a Baltimore ghetto, they are not doing well. Zakariyya, the youngest of her children, has had the toughest life. He was born after his mother’s cancer was already widespread, and she died shortly after his birth. He has drifted in and out of the military and in and out of jail. A moody and violent man, he once killed a man over a girl by stabbing him in the chest with a kitchen knife. Skloot is terrified at the prospect of meeting him: “I hoped to see the age of thirty, and it seemed like being the first white person to show up at Zakariyya’s apartment asking questions about his mother might interfere with that” (p. 241). But Deborah, the fourth of Henrietta’s five children and Skloot’s confidant, insists. They go together to the housing project where he lives. There, Zakariyya and Skloot sit on a bench. Her questions about his mother stoke his fury: I believe what them doctors did was wrong. They lied to us for twenty-five years, kept them cells from us, they gonna say them things donated by our mother. Them cells was stolen! Those fools come take blood from us sayin they need to run tests and not tell us that all these years they done profitized off of her. That’s like hanging out a sign on our backs saying, “I’m a sucker, kick me in my butt.” They probably think by what our mother’s cells had did that we well off. I hope George Grey [the scientist who first grew the cells] burn in hell. If he wasn’t dead already, I’d take a black pitchfork and stick it up his ass. I hope he burn in hell. If he were right here now, I’d kill him dead. The doctors say her cells is so important and did all this and that to help people. But it didn’t do no good for her, and it didn’t do no good for us. If me and my sister need something, we can’t even go see a doctor cause we can’t afford it. (p. 246) Deborah interrupts the tirade and says to Zakariyya, “I got something I want to give you.” From the back of her jeep, she takes out a photo that Skloot has managed to get for her. It is a large color photograph of the chromosomes in a HeLa cell. Zakariyya stares at it. “These supposed to be her cells?” he asked. Deborah nodded. “See where it stained bright colors. That’s where all her DNA at.” Zakariyya raised the picture to eye level and stared in silence. Deborah rubbed her hand on his back and whispered, “I think if anybody deserve that, it’s you, Zakariyya.” Zakariyya turned the picture to see it from every angle. “You want me to have this,” he said, finally. “Yeah, like you to have that. Put it on your wall,” Deborah said. Zakariyya’s eyes filled with tears. For a moment, the dark circles seemed to vanish. He put his arm on Deborah’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said, in a small voice unlike anything we’d heard that day. He put his arm on Deborah’s shoulder. “Hey, thanks.” . . . Then he walked slowly back to his building, holding the picture in front of him at eye level, seeing nothing ahead but the DNA in his mother’s cells. (p. 249) [End Page 22] My eyes brimmed, too. In that moment, we see the abstractions of genetics, race, and class dissolve. We see how Zakariyya’s angst and pain are really about the wrenching loneliness of a grown-up boy who had lost his mother. But not just that. The scene also captures the strange and unexpected...

Developing the “Christian Gentleman”: The Medieval Impulse in Protestant Ministry to Adolescent Boys, 1890–1920

AbstractBetween 1890 and 1920 in the United States, Protestant ministers demonstrated increasing concern for boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. In particular, they described a two-fold “boy problem,” defined both in terms of heightened juvenile delinquency and passive effeminacy. This essay analyzes one of the chief ways in which church leaders attempted to combat these issues: the development of Christian boy ministries rooted in the stories and themes of medieval knighthood. Looking at the use of such themes in Protestant literature and in new church organizations such as the Knights of King Arthur and the Knights of the Holy Grail, this article reveals why medievalism had such power and resonance in this era. In part, the symbolic use of the Middle Ages fit well with emerging psychological theories of adolescent development. According to G. Stanley Hall and other proponents of racial recapitulation, adolescent boys were instinctually driven by a need to join their medieval forebears in fighting battles, worshiping heroes, and forming romantic relationships marked by love and chivalry. In addition, the medieval knight emerged as the ideal exemplar for dealing with both aspects of the early twentieth-century boy problem. While boys struggled with moral decadence and effeminate weakness, knights were both morally refined and confidently virile. In the end, I argue that the proliferation of medieval themes in this period reflected a growing consensus regarding the “ideal Christian man.” While uncontrolled masculine expression produced the violent man, and the suppression of masculine expression produced the weak man, carefully channeled masculine expression would produce the “knightly” man, the ideal “Christian gentleman” capable of pursuing purity and virtue through manly and aggressive means.

Partner Violence, Technologies of the Self, and Masculinity in Mexico

This article discusses qualitative research conducted with a group of Mexican men working against their violence toward their female partners. Using a Foucauldian analysis based on concepts of subjectivation and ethics of self, I argue that in this psycho]educational intervention a new subject is produced through these menfs embodiment of the technical language of the discourse of violence against women: the violent man. In the program, adopting such an identity is regarded as the necessary condition for stopping violent behavior. From that starting point a whole technology of self is implemented in order to work with menfs emotions and bodies. Pain is regarded as the true substance and antidote against all other undesirable emotions, including anger.

Een godvechter wordt voorvechter

A godfighter becomes a fighter for God &#x0D; &#x0D; The Pastoral Letters refer twice, in biographical notes, to the religious past of the apostle Paul. In 1 Timothy 1 he is qualified as “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man” (NIV). These qualifications are the stereotypes of a “godfighter", as they are known in secular and early Jewish literature of antiquity. Nevertheless, Paul did not become a recipient of divine vengeance, but of the grace of the Lord. He thus became a fighter for God: the advocate of Christianity. Against this background, how can 2 Timothy 1 state of the same Paul that he, like his Jewish ancestors, has continued to serve God with a clear conscience? This could be seen as a strange discrepancy. Exegesis of both statements in context makes clear, however, that the Pastoral Letters draw a consistent picture of Paul. He had to redefine his faith, but in doing this he did not engage in the worship of any other God than the God of his forefathers.

The Pregnancy Put the Screws On

Qualitative research interviews were conducted with professionals working with men inclined to violence. The aim was to explore professional discourses about intimate partner violence with special reference to gender and to the partner's period of pregnancy. Three major findings are presented. Firstly, the professionals had a rather fixed understanding of opposite gender positions as well as a split picture of the violent man as both weak and tough, thus violence may result from poor self-confidence combined with a desire for power and control and the fear of losing it. Secondly, the pregnancy was identified as a stressor that, together with other circumstances, could trigger violence. Thirdly, the topic of pregnancy and other relational topics were typically omitted from the conversations with men inclined to violence. This study discusses inconsistencies that might counteract the professionals' intentions of building an alternative masculinity in men inclined to violence.

The Co-occurrence of Child and Intimate Partner Maltreatment in the Family: Characteristics of the Violent Perpetrators

This study considers the characteristics associated with mothers and fathers who maltreat their child and each other in comparison to parents who only maltreat their child. One hundred and sixty-two parents who had allegations of child maltreatment made against them were considered. The sample consisted of 43 fathers (Paternal Family—PF) and 23 mothers (Maternal Family—MF) who perpetrated both partner and child maltreatment, together with 23 fathers (Paternal Child—PC) and 26 mothers (Maternal Child—MC) who perpetrated child maltreatment only. In addition, 2 fathers (Paternal Victim—PV) and 23 mothers (Maternal Victim—MV) were victims of intimate partner maltreatment and perpetrators of child maltreatment and 7 fathers (Paternal Non-abusive Carer—PNC) and 15 mothers (Maternal Non-abusive Carer—MNC) did not maltreat the child but lived with an individual who did. Within their family unit, 40.7% of parents perpetrated both intimate partner and child maltreatment. However, fathers were significantly more likely to maltreat both their partner and child than mothers and mothers were significantly more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than fathers. PF fathers conducted the highest amount of physical and/or sexual child maltreatment while MC and MV mothers perpetrated the highest amount of child neglect. Few significant differences between mothers were found. PF fathers had significantly more factors associated with development of a criminogenic lifestyle than PC fathers. Marked sex differences were demonstrated with PF fathers demonstrating significantly more antisocial characteristics, less mental health problems and fewer feelings of isolation than MF mothers. MC mothers had significantly more childhood abuse, mental health problems, parenting risk factors and were significantly more likely to be biologically related to the child than PC fathers. This study suggests that violent families should be assessed and treated in a holistic manner, considering the effects of partner violence upon all family members, rather than exclusively intervening with the violent man.

The Punishment of Dixie Shanahan: Is There Justice for Battered Women Who Kill?

Dixie Schrieber and Scott Shanahan began dating in 1983. On May 10, 2004, Dixie Schrieber Shanahan was sentenced to fifty years of imprisonment for the murder of Scott Shanahan. In between, there was a marriage, children—and years of horrendous abuse. During the nineteen years that Dixie and Scott Shanahan were together, Scott blackened Dixie’s eyes, bruised her, threatened her, dragged her by her hair, pointed guns at her, tied her up and left her for days in the basement, called her vile names, degraded her in front of friends, and generally made her life a living hell. On August 30, 2002, believing that her life and the life of her unborn child were in danger after days of beatings, threats, and the promise, “This day is not over yet. I will kill you,” Dixie Shanahan shot her husband while he lay in bed. After less than one day of deliberation, a jury found Dixie Shanahan guilty of second-degree murder. Judge Charles L. Smith III sentenced Dixie Shanahan to fifty years in prison. The community of Defiance, Iowa, divided sharply around the prosecution of Dixie Shanahan. During the trial, both prosecution and defense witnesses agreed that Scott Shanahan was an extremely violent man who brutally abused his wife for years. But members of the community debated whether Dixie Shanahan was justified in killing her abuser. Some characterized Dixie Shanahan’s actions as a final, desperate attempt to save herself and her baby; others conceded the severity of the abuse she endured over the years but maintained that she had no right to take Scott Shanahan’s life.