Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction (Google eBook)Whether the product of passion or of a cool-headed decision to use ideas to rationalize excess, the decimation of the world's libraries occurred throughout the 20th century, and there is no end in sight. Cultural destruction is, therefore, of increasing concern. In her previous book "Libricide," Rebecca Knuth focused on book destruction by authoritarian regimes: Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and the Chinese Communists in Tibet. But authoritarian governments are not the only perpetrators. Extremists of all stripes--through terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and other forms of mass violence--are also responsible for widespread cultural destruction, as she demonstrates in this new book. "Burning Books and Leveling LibrarieS" is structured in three parts. Part I is devoted to struggles by extremists over voice and power at the local level, where destruction of books and libraries is employed as a tactic of political or ethnic protest. Part II discusses the aftermath of power struggles in Germany, Afghanistan, and Cambodia, where the winners were utopians who purged libraries in efforts to purify their societies and maintain power. Part III examines the fate of libraries when there is war and a resulting power vacuum. The book concludes with a discussion of the events in Iraq in 2003, and the responsibility of American war strategists for the widespread pillaging that ensued after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. This case poignantly demonstrates the ease with which an oppressed people, given the collapse of civil restraints, may claim freedom as license for anarchy, construing it as the right to prevail, while ignoring its implicit mandate of social responsibility. Using military might to enforce ideals (in this case democracy and freedom) is futile, Knuth argues, if insufficient consideration is given to humanitarian, security, and cultural concerns. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - Hagelstein - LibraryThingA thorough history of the causes, methods, and results of cultural destruction - specifically library destruction. Wartime Germany, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other instances of destruction are covered. Read full review
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Brilliant work!
The reviews on Amazon for this book speak for it. http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Books-Leveling-Libraries-Destruction-ebook/dp/B0029LHGFA
In the case of the burning of one of largest libraries in S. Asia, Sri Lanka, I wondered why it was not well known to the world. The author, Knuth, seems to have done a thorough research and revealed some root causes.
Amazing facts:
"Two Sinhalese Cabinet members who watched it burn from the verandah of the nearby Jaffna Rest House.."
- when asked to leave the burned Library and build the new one next to it, the Govt opposed it as they wanted to erase the memory(??)
- Shockingly the Jaffna Library was attacked a SECOND time, in 2010, after 19 years.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11668352
- was this part of a 'Silent Genocide of Tamils' that came obvious to the world in 2009 ?
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'If any state could virtually declare war against a section of its own people, and do it unashamedly, it happened in Sri Lanka this year.
Imagine a rowdy band of reserve policemen being brought all the way from the south to the Tamil capital city of Jaffna, and in the unusual presence in the city of two Cabinet Ministers, setting fire to the biggest cultural possession of the Tamils - the Public Library housing 95,000 volumes, some of them rare manuscripts...'
- Prof. Virginia A Leary; Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Sri Lanka; Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists (July-August 1981)
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Related books
Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiguity James Raven No preview available - 2004 |
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
41 | |
43 | |
71 | |
99 | |
101 | |
Chapter 6 Secular Fanaticism and the AutoGenocide of Cambodia 19751979 | 121 |
141 | |
159 | |
161 | |
179 | |
Chapter 10 Errors of Omission and Cultural Destruction in Iraq 2003 | 201 |
223 | |