This essay explores the differences between a practice called body modification and the behaviour known as self-injury (or self-harm, self-inflicted injury, self-mutilation, etc.), in which individuals purposefully harm themselves to get relief from strong emotion or in an attempt to gain control over themselves or their emotions. Although some consider both self-injury and body modification to be synonymous, I argue that self-injury is more like an addiction to many sufferers, making it like a mental illness or a disease. I use a narrative interview with a friend called 'Eva' to illustrate these differences from a self-harmer's point of view, and hope to show that while body modifiers are often proud of their transformations and view the process as a rite, self-harmers, in contrast, are often secretive and ashamed of their behaviour or addiction.
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Shame, Guilt and Identity
An Essay
Jaime Rollins
In Anthropology in Action
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2007
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 74–79 (5 total)
Money, Religion, and Symbolic Exchange in Winter Sleep
Bülent Diken
force in the modern economy, for capitalism and Christianity are structurally bound together. What links them is articulated in social theory as the notion of guilt or debt. Seen in this prism, not only has capitalism found support in religion, but it
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 94–108 (15 total)
Representing German Victimhood and Guilt: The Neue Wache and Unified German Memory
Siobhan Kattago
Commemorating National Socialism and Communism from the perspective
of 1989 often results in an uneasy conflation of German
guilt and victimhood. When the events of 1933-1989 are presented
as one long authoritarian period, war and tyranny can easily be construed
as external forces that simply befell the German nation.
While memories of national guilt are divisive, memories of victimhood
unify and simplify an otherwise ambiguous past. The 1995
restoration of Berlin’s Neue Wache is emblematic of this conflation
of guilt and victimhood. As the central German memorial to all victims
of war and tyranny, the Neue Wache neither distinguishes
between dictatorships, nor between perpetrator and victim.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 1998
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 86–104 (18 total)
"The Facts Behind the Guilt"? Background and Implicit Intentions in 'Downfall'
Jurgen Pelzer
The film Downfall, released in 2004 at the height of an unprecedented "Hitler wave," has to be seen in a long tradition of literary and cinematic attempts to deal with Germany's "unmasterable past." The filmmakers claimed that by focusing on Hitler's final days before the end of WWII they had discovered "new territory" and presented the "facts behind the guilt." This article points out, however, that the film is historiographically based on the account by Joachim Fest's book Downfall-in which the author, as in his earlier work, follows a methodological approach that personalizes history and focuses on Hitler as "singular personality," rejecting any systematic analysis of political and social context. The film goes even further in its unscrupulous blurring of fact and fiction and simplistically juxtaposes a very small group of perpetrators (basically Hitler and Goebbels) and the large group of victims, i.e., the general population that only wanted to survive. Such an attempt to focus on a tragically failing, isolates Hitler, who alone is to blame for nation's "Downfall" is hardly suitable to help Germans to step out of the shadow of their past.
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2007
- Article Type:
- Discussion
- Pages:
- 90–101 (11 total)
Guilt and Accountability in the Postwar Courtroom
The Holocaust in Czortków and Buczacz, East Galicia, as Seen in West German Legal Discourse
Omer Bartov
This article examines the way in which West German courts confronted the case of low-level, former Nazi perpetrators who conducted mass killings of Jews in isolated towns in Eastern Europe. Using the example of the towns of Czortków and Buczacz in eastern Galicia, the article argues that such trials, conducted in the late 1950s and 1960s, sought both to recreate the historical reality of genocide on the local level, where killers and victims often knew each other by name, and to identify a type of perpetrator who differed essentially from "ordinary" Germans, even as he was himself invariably defined as a "victim of the circumstances of that time."
In Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2013
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 96–123 (28 total)
Guilt, responsibility, and denial. The past at stake in post‐Milošević Serbia by Gordy, Eric
Čarna Brković
In Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
- Published (Print):
- 01 May 2014
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 235–237 (2 total)
A Totem and a Taboo
Germans and Jews Re-enacting Aspects of the Holocaust
Jeremy Schonfield
the older generations of Germans feel less guilty at meeting Poles than had they met them in Germany. Guilt at the presence of Jews, however, was mitigated only by the academic nature of the conference. There seemed to be less easy mingling between
In European Judaism
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 87–106 (20 total)
Redeeming Lady Macbeth
Gender and Religion in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth (2015)
Marta Bernabeu
to get rid of the overarching guilt inscribed in her body by metaphorically washing the blood off her hands. Preceding her death, this moment depicts Lady Macbeth in an ambivalent light following her apparent repentance, thus expanding her character
The German Mountain Troops and Their Opponents, 1943 to the Present
Nathan Stoltzfus
fueled by significant police and army resources, over what happened on Cephalonia illustrates continuing disputes about guilt and responsibility. Both sides, one a long-established veteran's group backed by powerful government agencies, solicited help
In German Politics and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 72–90 (19 total)
Rhinos and Hippos, Oh My!
Laurent Obertone and the Dangers of Domestication
Louis Betty
and the urban core; second, the influence of Islamism; and third, the open-society ethos of the post-WWII era, which, combined with postcolonial guilt, may cause European populations to react sentimentally rather than prudently when faced with drivers
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2023
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 48–70 (23 total)