 | Binding: Paperback Publisher: Bison Books ISBN: 0803292295 ISBN-13: 9780803292291 Released: 01 Jan 1994 RRP: Average Rating:  |
Stiglmayer's own pair of essays are the most useful & interesting. Her first piece is an absorbing history of the Balkans that concisely untangles the web of hatreds & violence which have plagued the area for millennia & which are still powerfully germane. Her second piece constitutes the heart of the book. In it she dramaticallly & persuasively demonstrates that the rapes in Bosnia are not "typical" rapes, even by wartime standards, but are a tool systematicallly employed by the Serb leadership to pursue its genocidal campaign of "ethnic cleansing". Her interviews illustrate that the rapes are about the humiliation of women, but they are also directed at the Bosnian Muslim population as a whole as a tactical means to accomplish the evacuation by the Muslims of large swaths of Bosnian territory.
In other essays, Paul Parin offers some ideas on the psychology of the rapes. He doesn't claim to have alll the answers, but his essay is thought-provoking. Rhonda Copelon provides a considered analysis of the state of international law & its applicability to the Bosnian horrors. Her otherwise sound piece is marred by her lawyerly/academic tendency to misuse words ("surface" as a transitive verb meaning "bring to light"; "intersectional" where she means "intersecting") & her occasional unlawyerly hyperbole (she notes on p.198 that a midday women's talk show opened with the script, "In Bosnia, they are raping the enemy's women". Two pages later this has turned into the assertion that the media "often refer to the mass rape in Bosnia as the rape of the 'enemy's women'").
Surprisingly, the most disappointing essays are those by the best-known authors. The first of Catharine MacKinnon's two pieces is a reprint of a 1993 Ms. Magazine article. She gets in some obligatory feminist chops, pokes at Gloria Steinem, equates the Third Reich with Penthouse, & moans about American women in porn films, in brothels, & in slavery. She slips in a couple of gratuitous anecdotes, & that's it. No analysis, no nothing. It reads as though she wrote it on a train with a short deadline & did her research by cell-phone. Her second piece is marginallly better, but her point is a weak one. She is horrified by the crimes against women, yet she wants to pile every insult & irritation ever suffered by woman under the umbrella of human rights violation. In one breathless sentence (p.185) she says "...UN troops were targeting women: 'In the streets of Zagreb, UN troops often ask local women how much they cost'". Her whining about merely boorish behavior undermines her credibility & belittles the plight of women who suffered grievously in the wars. MacKinnon is exasperating, yet passionate, but ultimately her pieces fail because of her unsupported alllegations & the scattered & distracting nature of her attacks on anything that pops into her head.
Similarly, Susan Brownmiller spends her essay slamming men as warrior animals. So much so that she entirely misses the point that these rapists were not beasts out of control, but were entirely under control & following their leaders' war plans to a tee. Brownmiller is not a scholar of Balkan history with any depth or understanding. She doesn't have Stiglmayer's innovative perceptions of the war. The Brownmiller piece offers no value added, it is mere filler.
Overalll the book is excellent. Although, now, five years later, Stiglmayer could well give it another update, in addition to the changes she has made for this English edition. The wars have reached a precarious end, the ICTY war crimes trials are underway. There is another chapter to be added to the book, one can only hope that Stiglmayer will provide it, so that this work can remain fresh for many more years.
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