From Publishers Weekly
Contrary to its title, the 10 essays in Mass Rape are concerned more with gender theory than with the plight of Bosnian women. Catharine MacKinnon, most often associated with the battle against pornography in North America, contributed two essays. In one, she likens rape camps to brothels. In both, she says, these sexual crimes ``are to everyday rapes what the Holocaust was to everyday anti-Semitism.'' Such repetition brings into question the skills of the editor, but because Stiglmayer's two essays are by far the most compelling--and stick closest to the subject matter--she can be forgiven. One of four contributors with direct experience of the former Yugoslavia, her accounts of the victims and rapists are chilling, and her historical perspective provides an understanding of what is happening now in the Balkans. The closest the other writers come to historical perspective is to theorize about why women are raped during war. Susan Brownmiller says ``the penis becomes justified as a weapon in a logistical reality of unarmed noncombatants.'' Ruth Seifert reasons that women ``are the objects of a fundamental hatred that characterizes the cultural unconscious and is actualized in times of crisis.'' As feminist jargon, it can't be beat. But when it comes to helping further the understanding of the Bosnian women who have been taken from their homes in the middle of the night, blindfolded, gang-raped and violated with broken bottles-- Mass Rape disappoints.
Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia has prompted calls for a war crimes tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials. The core essay in this collection, originally published in Germany in 1993, is one of the documents that first called attention to the magnitude of the atrocities. Its interviews with 20 rape survivors makes clear that all sides in the dispute are committing a share of the atrocities and that these actions are part of a deliberate plan. Additional essays in this first English edition by editor Stiglmayer, Roy Gutman, Catharine MacKinnon, Susan Brownmiller, and others discuss ethnopsychology, why rape always occurs during war, previous war crimes tribunals, the legal and feminist issues involved in bringing charges now, and, unconvincingly, the roots of the present conflict. The reporting's nonsensational, understated approach does nothing to blunt the horror of the events reported. Recommended for international affairs and women's studies collections.
Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
