FWD: Dworkin I

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Andrea Dworkin:
Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation

>From Publishers Weekly
"I am... a lapsed pacifist. With extreme difficulty and reluctance I have
come to believe that women have to be literate in both strategic violence
and the violence of self-defense," writes Dworkin in her impassioned,
sometimes brilliant and often problematic analysis of how institutionalized
male violence against women, children and Jews has shaped the modern world.
Beginning with the premise that violence born of anti-Semitism and from the
hatred of women are similar, she argues that both wage a "war on the body"
of the scapegoat and that resistance has taken the form of Zionism and
feminism. Dworkin (whose Woman Hating and Pornography have influenced the
women's movement) approaches her topics with a strong, frequently unsettling
mixture of nuance and polemic, piling fact upon fact to make her arguments.
Holocaust literature, Sylvia Plath's poems, the critical theories of Jacques
Derrida, The Merchant of Venice, Gore Vidal's Live from Golgotha, The Turner
Diaries and Benjamin Disraeli's novels (the bibliography includes more than
1,500 titles)--all find their way into her onslaught of information,
statistics and analysis. While she frequently overstates her case (as when
she claims that "women rarely report crimes involving either rape or
battery"), Dworkin makes potent points (as when she examines the similar
attitudes toward women, Jews and African-Americans in the writings of both
conservative and right-wing vigilante groups in the U.S.). This weighty
treatise unfailingly engages and provokes. Agent, Elaine Markson. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

>From Library Journal
Dworkin's (Life and Death; Intercourse) exegesis on anti-Semitism and
misogyny traces the often-parallel paths of both forms of hatred. The
atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust and the particularities of fascism's abuse
of women are vividly rendered. Likewise, the psychological after-effects of
historical efforts to eradicate world Jewry are starkly and convincingly
documented. "Anyone who has suffered torture will never again be able to be
at ease with the world," Dworkin writes. Indeed, those hurt routinely lash
out: Jews are scapegoated by non-Jews, Palestinians are scapegoated by
Israelis, and women are scapegoated by men. While Dworkin does not believe
such behavior is inevitable, she argues that the Middle East is an
especially thorny proving ground, juxtaposing the Jewish desire for national
sovereignty against the reality that, for many females, both home and
homeland are fraught with violence. Dworkin's solution is sure to rankle:
women should abandon men for single-gender alliances that advance their
self-interests. Although this conclusion is certainly arguable, this
impressively researched, if controversial, text will draw a wide array of
readers. Highly recommended for all libraries.
-Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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