Thinking in an Emergency (Amnesty International Global Ethics Series) [Hardcover]

Elaine Scarry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2011 | Series: Amnesty International Global Ethics Series

Author of the landmark study The Body in Pain, Elaine Scarry offers a stunning and original analysis of the “claim of emergency.”

For sixty years, modern democratic governments have undermined democracy and increased executive power by invoking the idea of emergency. They have bypassed constitutional provisions concerning presidential succession, the declaration of war, the use of torture, civilian surveillance, and the arrangements for nuclear weapons. In the desire for swift national action, we citizens devalue thinking and ignore ways to check government power, plunging our countries into a precarious state between monarchy and democracy. Drawing on the work of philosophers, neuroscientists, and artists, Elaine Scarry proves decisively that thinking and rapid action are compatible. Practices that we dismiss as mere habit and protocol instead represent rigorous, effective modes of thought that we must champion in times of crisis. Scarry’s bold claim on behalf of fundamental democratic principles will enliven and enrich the ongoing debate about leadership.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Written with passion from a deeply humanitarian standpoint . . . a mind-blowing canter around some difficult topics—conflict, democracy and nuclear war.. . . I will give this book the ultimate accolade—I will buy copies as gifts for others.” (Patrick Tissington - Times Higher Education (UK) ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Elaine Scarry is the Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her book The Body in Pain was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 157 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1ST edition (March 14, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393078981
• ISBN-13: 978-0393078985
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #668,858 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprising book; It may change how you view our world today August 27, 2011

By Phil in Magnolia TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I purchased this book thinking that it would provide insight into how decisions are made in emergency situations. It does do that, to a certain extent, but the main thesis of the book is actually quite different than the title alone might suggest.

This book is focused on is explaining how modern societies, in particular the eight nuclear weapons states (the U.S. plus seven others) have come to live in a state of "chronic emergency", and "with more and more powers ceded to the countries president or prime minister", rather than being decided through deliberation involving either the legislature or the public, or both.

Right off the bat, the book challenged my view of our democracy, stating that we in fact do not any longer have a full democracy because of the extent to which power has been delegated by statute to the President. It cites as examples, from recent years, the decisions to sanction torture, detention without charge, and decisions involving use of our military without a formal declaration of war.

These are all actions we are familiar with and have lived through, but the observation that these represent a real shift away from true democratic decision making is thought provoking. For me it was stunning and I am still absorbing the whole shift in paradigm that results once you absorb the authors arguments.

The book is strongly pro democracy and anti nuclear weapons, and as the reviewer in "Times Higher Education" has pointed out, Scarry writes from a deeply humanitarian standpoint. It is not overly discouraging in how it presents our countries present situation but it does make it clear that we need to make changes in America if we want to check and hopefully reverse this shift that has been moving us more and more to a non-democratic rule.... With our preoccupation today on economic matters, this is not what people want to be thinking about, but the long term implications are very important and serious.

There is also a very interesting interview with the author, on the Boston Review website, discussing the book and posted on July 13, 2011.

My discovery of this book has also made me aware of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series, of which this is the first volume. To date there has been one other book published (Can Intervention Work?), one scheduled for publication later this year (Universal Rights Down to Earth), one for release February, 2012 (The Human Right to Health), with further books by John Broome, Sheila Jasanoff, Martha Minow, Philip Pettit, and John Ruggie planned.

I recommend this book very highly. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, though worthy November 10, 2012

By toronto

Format:Paperback

Though I agree with the aim of this book (warning about nuclear war and the concentration of power in executive branches of government) the book is disjointed and unconvincing. It can't decide whether it is going to be a book about emergencies, about power, or about habit/deliberation. The least convincing part of the book is about the nuclear war issue. Scarry doesn't seem to grasp the main argument of her opponents, which is that contemporary nuclear warfare since 1945 cannot wait for declarations of war -- that governments must be, as it were, pre-mobilized to plausibly survive nuclear attack and retaliate. I don't agree with the premises, but the argument is a tough one to deal with. There is no discussion of the status of terrorists and the spread of weapons of mass destruction (by the time one reacts to their use, thousands may have died). Again, I don't agree with the premises, but where are the arguments for and against? Is pre-emption always bad? At the moment, any president is scared that another September 11 may happen, and that they will be accused of not having done enough to stop it beforehand. This is kind of crazy, but it is a basic political fact in America -- Scarry doesn't deal with it at all.

The debate about fallout shelters (in which she compares Swiss preparation as against American) is perfunctorily handled. Nowhere does she discuss the powerful anti-war mobilizations in the 1950's (Dorothy Day was a pioneer) where people argued that fallout shelters and drills were about "fighting and surviving" nuclear wars, making such wars more plausible. Holding one's citizenry hostage is, so far, an element of deterrence.

It is not remotely clear what the last chapter, on deliberation and habit, has to do with the rest of the book.... Except that thinking and planning before an emergency is a good thing. Did we need a fine philosopher (which Scarry is elsewhere, as in her book on the body in pain) to tell us this? Read more ›

4.0 out of 5 stars How peaceful people do emergencies July 18, 2012

By T. Coonen

Format:Paperback

Modern philosophy USA, where it is vital, is hugely a matter for pamphleteers, collectives and similar disassociated outlanders. It is so scattered and diverse as to be beyond a full appraisal. An h(a)ecceity, if you will, but even then, more probably many such entities as if we're all waiting for that genius who can make of this/us a cogent whole or who, unknown to us, already has. We'll look anywhere disciplined for this whatever-is-missing, to the arts, graffiti to opera, from chemistry to biochemistry to quantum biochemistry, from psychology to anthropology, from massive street gatherings to elitist cabals in the "temporary" police states of cities anywhere. This is a failure of philosophy, of self- and academia-professed philosophers who do not directly address the actual problems of our time, of people. (Maybe this is because the problems are so obvious and you can't make a living saying the same things over and over again especially when so many others are saying the same thing. Maybe because these problems are problems especially for people whose end is upon them because of these problems. The maybes multiply.)
The most serious problems of our era are obvious: nuclear extinction, post-dictatorial fascism, certain massive, unrestrained war-making powers, human generated toxic pollutants, stridently anti-egalitarian economics, our unpreparedness for sudden shifts in climate and biodiversity. Of all these problems, none is so dire, so absolute, as the first. But all these problems (and, of course, still others) play out, as it were, as pain and/or death for the living, every thing living, not merely us; it's not that professional philosophers couldn't possibly have anything to contribute to solutions, it's that most of them don't.... The questions of our times are professional questions only in the most compromised of situations/conditions. (There are reasons people mass in the streets like necessity all hollering pretty much the same things over and over again and one of those reasons is such behavior DOESN'T pay.)
Elaine Scarry has plenty of the behaviors common among professional philosophers and, in fact, she unapologetically loves and can practice a notably high academic version of philosophy. But that is not all she loves and practices and the work she presents to us is not the usual (re imperialist) ivy and falcarinol of the Harvard paycheck. There's a stubborn streak too, kind of a yankee, new england, transcendentalist refusal to forget what it is you're meaning to do even if it's not what the smart people and authorities do and like these days. Thus, she writes a monumental (if disregarded) book wherein she makes incredible demands of the English language and so masterfully meets those demands that you can almost forget her theme is torture, nuclear war, the literally under your skin realities of military/security powers. In The Body In Pain her arguments were scrupulously brought each to a physical point or field: fundemental, straightforward and undeniable in most instances as, specifically, pain itself.
In Thinking In An Emergency, Professor Scarry brings her arguments each to a place, a community. This is of her method; as pain disempowers each to a stark and horrible individuality, remedy carries each into relationships whose entire and clear purpose is healing. This book, which would otherwise be a "pamphlet" in the company it kept, is part of Amnesty International/W.W. Norton's projected "Global Ethics Series," an effort to "distill some of the most vexing issues of our time down to their clearest, most compelling essences." It all sounds very nice and scholarly, aimed toward professional and serious readers as if most of such were not in committed service to the elite, hierarchy and its nuclear-military guard.
But it's not all scholarly, nice and progressive; there's Scarry's stubborn streak, her pacifist's insistence on examining conditions at the heart of the nuclear-military state as those conditions are implemented in actual, living, human bodies, conditions expressly intended to diminish the human body. The diminishing specifically addressed in this book is the military insistence that only the military has the capacity to function and restore order in an emergency. The more catastrophic the emergency, they say, the more this is the case, even if the catastrophe is their doing. Her prose is simple and straightforward, she makes her simple point clearly and goes on to the next letting the clarity of the situation speak largely for itself. It's easy to briefly forget she has an enemy here and this small volume is a fairly relentless attack on the "security state." Against its arguments of inherent human weakness, ineffectiveness and cowardice, Scarry brings real world examples of the contrary. Her examples run from the humble to the national and are often examples, in human or theoretical terms, of this or that form of anarchy; but the catastrophes faced, the proving grounds, are true and immense catastrophes that quite thoroughly, physically and suddenly belittle the human.
Are we heading to a state where every catastrophe is answered by a military occupation (as per New Orleans, Port of Prince) or where there are so many catastrophes a seamless military occupation is required? Is there an alternative to military occupation? Questions like these and subtler float around in the text, due to the text, but are not the text. The text is about what people who want peace DO in an emergency. In so far as Thinking In An Emergency addresses the future it is in suggesting people who want peace should exercise their natural abilities, be prepared for emergency and not trust to distant and/or militarized others to rescue them. It's an easy read, I read it during my first aeroplane tripping in ten years. If you don't think the usa populace resembles an immense and hapless herd of sheep micromanaged, or find no weakness in it, you probably won't see any point in this book. But if "Baaa" to authority just don't cover it for ya, you'll find Elaine Scarry is an ally among those who do their research and get the details much better than you. She's from Harvard, y'know. Read more ›