Intellectual Complicity : The State and Its Destructions

Postmodern warfare and other contemporary forms of mass destruction are an integral part of the larger political and economic schemes from which they emerge.

Social and cultural studies of this violence are similarly embedded within their political environment and are thus tinged with the prevailing social philosophy.

Bruce Kapferer, a leading figure in political anthropology, here explores the deep links between human destruction and the literature on violence.

This pamphlet analyzes the relationship between the two, revealing how the literature may have an intellectual complicity with its subject.

With his usual acuity, Kapferer probes the debates on war and human destruction in this trenchant and moving piece."