Customer Reviews

Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

After reading the book, I read all of the reviews below. This book isn't as bad as the worst critics make it out to be, but it's not as good as the apologists purport. It's just another read. If you get assigned it for a feminist class, relax, read it, and move on. It's a strange book because it's not really about Bosnia - not having much to offer about politics or the war. It's not about sexual politics - being just another feminist screed. But it's mostly about the writer's own personal thoughts on rape as a military tool. If that interests you, you'll enjoy the book. If not, you probably won't be able to finish it.

When I read Rape Warfare for the first time at the height of the conflict in Bosnia I saw it as an important contribution, opening my eyes to the sytematic use of rape as a weapon and informing and inspiring my active involvement in seeking to end the war. After having recently re-read the book, I still view it as an important intervention so I was shocked to see the reader comments posted on Amazon. Both are misguided but the second appears to quickly fall to personal attack rather than a reasoned argument.

The "New York Reader" seems to entirely miss the point of Allen's addition of a conversation with a Bosnian woman on the centrality of the Bogamils to Bosnian culture. The conversation has no pretensions to historical argument; that is precisely why it is related as a conversation rather than as historical fact. By providing a personal rather than an academic account of the Bogomils, Allen shows how important the idea of the Bogomils have become in articulating a Bosnian tradition of ecumenism and multiculturalism. The question of whether or not Bosnian nobles were Bogomils in the 1500s or the scope of their influence misses the point here; what is fascinating about Allen's account is how many Bosnians have appropriated the history of the Bogomils to promote a pluralistic Bosnia.

The second reviewer takes deep offense with Allen for foregrounding her identity, attacking her as self-obsessed. If only more scholarship on the Balkans would show such an awareness of the author's subjectivity. From the plethora of patronizing Western accounts of the war to blatant propaganda designed for domestic consumption - all hid personal and professional interests behind the veil of an "objective" analysis. And it is questionable that anyone can or should separate "feelings" from "research" in the first place, particularly when the topic is as incomprehensible as genocidal rape. It's clear from the reviewer's emotional response to Allen's book that he/she is not immune to the range of feelings that accounts of the war in Bosnia elicits.

While there are some shortcomings with regard to historical and cultural specificities in the book, Allen is not a regional "expert" nor does she claim to be. She clearly states her reasons and goal in writing the book - to raise awareness of genocidal rape and to do something about it. The fact that rape was not even covered by international law five years ago but is being prosecuted today is a great testament to the few scholars like Allen who have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of rape as a war crime. Rape Warfare stands as an important exception to the notable silence and moral passivity of most Western academics (and American ones in particular) during this modern genocide.

I tried to read book, I read first half, but writer only talk about himself. Where is the book? Why does writer not talk about Bosnia? Who cares about writer? I did not intend to buy her biography. This book is useless.

This is a dreadful book. Didn't the writer do ANY research on Bosnia? When I got to the part where she said that describing the Bogomil philosophy was critical to understanding the mass rapes in 1992 and 1993, I nearly tossed the book in the trash. The Bogomils were a medieval religious sect that died out in the 1500s. Recent scholarship has questioned not only their influence, but also whether the Bosnian nobles were even Bogomils in the first place. The writer relies on a single interview with a seemingly distraught woman, she quotes extensively from the interview and decides that understanding this obscure theology is a useful tool for her readers. Maybe if she'd done the research instead of quoting someone she felt sorry for, the book would be better.

This book comes equipped with the subtitle: "The Hidden Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia". It would be better subtitled: "How I Feel about Rape, Women, and my Own Interesting Self". It is a silly narcissistic, self-referential volume. It is a pathetic excuse for academic scholarship, where feelings substitute for research, where emotions are facts, and where accusations constitute reality. To call Allen a lazy researcher would not be accurate, she appears to possess abundant energy but doesn't appear inclined to expend any of it in the pursuit of accuracy or substance. She does seem to organize a number of conferences and then shares their details with us, including one particularly ghastly Alpine fantasy in Slovenia. The book is so absurd that I finished it only as one might watch a slow-motion train wreck - appalled at myself for continuing to turn the pages, yet unable to tear myself away from its awfulness. To quote the Critic: this book fills a much-needed gap on the bookshelf.

The faults in this book would constitute a book in themselves. Here is an abbreviated list, in no particular order:

Allen spends the FIRST FORTY PAGES of the book discussing how she feels about this topic, and how she plans to approach it. It is not until the third chapter (she indulges in the conceit of calling her chapters `themes' to account for their lack of continuity) that she finally begins a discussion of the substantive issue at hand.

At least she lets us know in the introduction that the book will be tough sledding, when she states that the atrocities in Bosnia are a cognitive problem for her, i.e., she can't believe it because it's so bad. This perspective of the author's feelings and how the war makes her feel is the dominant theme of the book. To say that Allen gets in the way of the book would be inaccurate, since she IS the book.

Allen blithely confesses to her lack of concern for factual accuracy, as in the endnote where she admits that a UN investigator has been unable to confirm the existence of pornographic videotapes of Bosnian rapes. Undeterred, Allen notes "whether they exist in fact or simply as rumor, even the rumor of such tapes is a chilling aspect of this genocide".

In another endnote, she bemoans her inability to find a suitable definition of the word "ethnicity" because she chooses to define it in cultural rather than genetic terms. At the same time, she falls in love with the word "toposcape" which she has invented, using variations of it five times before you finish the first chapter. "Toposcape" doesn't appear in any of my standard dictionaries, but Allen doesn't offer us a definition. It appears to mean alternately `region' or `demographics', or something.

She makes obvious factual errors, on page 15 mistaking the city of Vukovar for the region of Voyvodina, and on page 105 confusing Panama for Nicaragua. She has a shallow understanding of Balkan history, her full and complete explanation for the recent wars is contained in a few lines which read, "Decades of dictatorship created sectors of privilege and oppression that are now being renegotiated by means of war and genocide". This is simply sloppy scholarship. However she needs to be brief in explaining the conflict, because the more space she devotes to politics and history, the less she is able to talk about herself.

In the chapter entitled "Identity", she feels compelled to offer us four pages of background about her Swedish roots, Oakland, and her trip to Sweden. She follows this with a quick paragraph about "M", her Croatian-American interlocutor. It's not difficult to discern the relative importance of characters in this book.

The chapter entitled "Analysis" is little more than an inter-feminist catfight. She spends six pages attacking a 1975 work by Susan Brownmiller, and then another five slamming Croatian feminist Slavenka Drakulic in surprisingly personal terms, referring to her in a note as a "rank opportunist". It's all pretty unseemly, this material would have been better sent in a personal letter to Drakulic.

This is only a partial list of this book's dozens of shortcomings, both of substance and style. Feel free to compile your own list. Allen's explanations are often internally contradictory, and her thesis seems to change from chapter to chapter. In short, this book is junk, self-absorbed nonsense. It has nothing to recommend it, although the cover art is sort of catchy. If you don't read any other books about the Balkans this year, don't read this one either.

Rape Warfare was a courageous book to write: Beverly Allen dared to speak out about how rape was being used systematically before `historical consensus' had validated that claim. Thus it became an influential and historically significant work, credited today with having been instrumental in the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal's decision to change international law so that war rape might now be prosecuted as a "crime against humanity." The very first convictions under this new law were handed down in February 2001.

Incidentally, some apparently not up-to-date on recent strides in research approaches, failed to grasp the importance of the inclusion in Rape Warfare of Dr. Allen's personal responses, especially considering the situation on the ground in the Balkans at that time. The information coming from interviews is always shaped by the attitudes and expectations of the interviewer. Thus it becomes the interviewer's duty to both REVEAL and SITUATE the details of her/his own subjectivity.

By withholding the gruesome details of the rapes, Allen protected the women she interviewed; she spared them the kind of re-victimization they experience when journalists pander to public prurience, making pornography of these women's horrors. Nonetheless, or perhaps even, therefore, Rape Warfare is also `about' the power of stories; it makes a significant contribution to demonstrating that narrative, often disqualified as "not objective," is, in fact, a valid tool for discovering the deepest truths.

[Susan Schwartz Senstad is the author of MUSIC FOR THE THIRD EAR (Picador, 2001), which treats the fate of, among others, a Croatian woman who seeks asylum in Norway after being subjected to the mass rapes in Bosnia.]

I believe much of Beverly Allen's book. I do have questions. I think it is worth 3 stars but if some dock it to one, I will give it 4.

I wonder about some of the accusations in the book, which would be quite serious, such as the "Alpine" incident referred to in a below review. What is additionally serious, is the Serbs known 3 fingered salute. The book refers to this too. If the claims could be substantiated and are true, it would be important.

Rape Warfare was a courageous book to write: Beverly Allen dared to speak out about how rape was being used systematically before `historical consensus' had validated that claim. Thus it became an influential and historically significant work, credited today with having been instrumental in the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal's decision to change international law so that war rape might now be prosecuted as a "crime against humanity." The very first convictions under this new law were handed down in February 2001.

Incidentally, some reader reviewers, apparently not up-to-date on recent strides in research approaches, failed to grasp the importance of the inclusion in Rape Warfare of Dr. Allen's personal responses, especially considering the situation on the ground in the Balkans at that time. The information coming from interviews is always shaped by the attitudes and expectations of the interviewer. Thus it becomes the interviewer's duty to both REVEAL and SITUATE the details of her/his own subjectivity.

By withholding the gruesome details of the rapes, Allen protected the women she interviewed; she spared them the kind of re-victimization they experience when journalists pander to public prurience, making pornography of these women's horrors. Nonetheless, or perhaps even, therefore, Rape Warfare is also `about' the power of stories; it makes a significant contribution to demonstrating that narrative, often disqualified as "not objective," is, in fact, a valid tool for discovering the deepest truths.

[Susan Schwartz Senstad is the author of MUSIC FOR THE THIRD EAR (Picador, 2001), which treats the fate of, among others, a Croatian woman who seeks asylum in Norway after being subjected to the mass rapes in Bosnia.]

Allen knows zilch about the Balkans, knows nothing about the war, prattles on incessantly about herself. Seems she heard some horrifying stories of mass rapes from acquaintances and decided to write about how bad that made her feel. That's it. If you care about that, then this book is for you.

Mostly a personal account, not much real data. Sort of a feminist take on rape in wartime, but a little under-researched and over-dramatized. Not recommended.