The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment

by Kate Millett

Book Overview

From one of the most influential figures of the last twenty years-the author of Sexual Politics-comes this brilliant work in which Kate Millet sets out a new theory of politics for our time, a harrowing view of the modern state based on the practice of torture as a method of rule, as conscious policy.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393035751
• ISBN13: 9780393035759
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 335 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

"To speak of the unspeakable is the beginning of action."

Linking various accounts of torture and imprisonment from around the world with analyses of world culture, Kate Millett explores where cultural permission begins that allows these sorts of atrocities to occur. From Nazi Germany to South Africa, from South and Central America to Ireland, she shows how similar the experiences of those captured and tortured are throughout the world, and since this has all happened during the last century, it is all the more chilling, especially in the light of recent world events. With her compelling mixture of the personal with the political, Millett holds up a mirror to our American complicity in these crimes and challenges us to do something about it, if nothing else but to not be silent. Published almost a decade ago, "The Politics of Cruelty" is still timely and important because these sorts of occurrences have never ceased. They just are better hidden. Millett's ninety-year-old mother is quoted at the end in the acknowledgments as saying, "I am not sure I wanted to know this much before I died... but then, imagine what they knew." Such a truth ought to not be overlooked.