Sarah Schulman, “Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair” (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016)

New Books in Sociology · May 4, 2018 · 1h 2m

Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) examines how accusations of harm are appropriated and deployed by powerful people, groups, and political entities in order to justify extreme punitive measures against marginalized “others.” The book exposes how the powerful capitalize on the language of abuse and misrepresent normative conflict, expressions of difference, and resistance to abuse, in order to avoid accountability and self-reflexivity. Linking a wide range of contexts, from intimate…