Articles liés à States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering

States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering - Couverture souple

Cohen, Stanley

 
9780745623924: States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 0745623921 ISBN 13 : 9780745623924
Editeur : Polity Press, 2000

Synopsis

Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see ... these are all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognize their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments deny their responsibility for atrocities, and plan them to achieve 'maximum deniability'. Truth Commissions try to overcome the suppression and denial of past horrors. Bystander nations deny their responsibility to intervene.

Do these phenomena have anything in common? When we deny, are we aware of what we are doing or is this an unconscious defence mechanism to protect us from unwelcome truths? Can there be cultures of denial? How do organizations like Amnesty and Oxfam try to overcome the public's apparent indifference to distant suffering and cruelty? Is denial always so bad - or do we need positive illusions to retain our sanity?

States of Denial is the first comprehensive study of both the personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical studies of depression, to media images of suffering, to explanations of the 'passive bystander' and 'compassion fatigue'. The book shows how organized atrocities - the Holocaust and other genocides, torture, and political massacres - are denied by perpetrators and by bystanders, those who stand by and do nothing.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

Stanley Cohen is at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of numerous books, including Visions of Social Control (Polity, 1985), Folk Devils and Moral Panics:The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (1980), Against Criminology (1988) and Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long Term Imprisonment (1973).

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Polity Press
Date d'édition
2000
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0745623921
ISBN 13 
9780745623924
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
360
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible