Blood and nation : the European aesthetics of race
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Blood and nation : the European aesthetics of race
（Contemporary ethnography series）
University of Pennsylvania Press, c1999
Available at 14 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Throughout its history, Europe has been marked by xenophobia and intolerance often leading to violent intergroup conflicts. Uli Linke explores how extensions of blood imagery used in language became a way of expressing cultural superiority--and breed violence even today.
Linke traces the concept of blood and its metaphorical significance from pre-Christian times to the post-war period. She first examines the mythic implications of blood as representative of kinship, womanhood, and masculine physicality in early Europe, and then shows how blood became the agent of male domination in medieval times and how its reference eventually shifted from gender to ethnicity and ultimately to race. This was demonstrated by the Nazis' emphasis on blood purity and persists today in modern Germany with fears of "over-foreignization" and renewed articulations of violence.
Blood and Nation challenges many closely held assumptions of twentieth-century Europe as it helps explain why mass violence toward minorities appears so often throughout history. It ingeniously links folklore, cultural studies, and political theory to offer a new understanding of the European aesthetics of race.
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