Beverly Allen
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By: University of Minnesota Press
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Subjects -> Gay & Lesbian -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> Abuse & Self Defense -> Rape
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> Bosnia and Herzegovina
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
Not a Great Book 2 out of 5 stars.
23 of 26 people found this review helpful.
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.
Terrible Book 1 out of 5 stars.
14 of 21 people found this review helpful.
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.
Take Note: An Influential Book 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.
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.]
