Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair
Written by Sarah Schulman
Narrated by Sarah Schulman
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians.
Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, and The Gentrification of the Mind), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
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Reviews for Conflict Is Not Abuse
73 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hauntingly resonant today 2023 November
Also well-written and solid voice nice to listen to - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I agree with the basic premise of this book, but I have two primary areas of concern that are pushing me to put it down and find any other author’s approach to it. First of all, I don’t believe this is a subject I need to be reading from the perspective of a white woman regardless of her sexual orientation or other marginalized status. Secondly, I found the first chapter so repulsive as a sexual assault survivor that I had to stop midway to pull myself out of a dissociative episode, and I would highly recommend any reader of similar background to skip it if they choose to read it. While I do think she makes good points in it about relying too heavily on one-sided (digital) communication, the author veers into a segment where she basically invalidates any rejection of a potential sexual partner. She doesn’t seem willing to address her own trauma of rejection as a queer woman, instead projecting the responsibility to coddle the feelings of the rejected on the rest of the world. It’s just so strange and offputting, and also right up the alley of the type of social justice writing that the man who attacked me would align himself with. Again, the premise/thesis is great, but I will definitely be seeking less self-centered voices to present it.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There's some real insight here, but I think this book would have been better as a single focused essay. Instead the author has added a lot of anecdata which I'm not sure holds up to scrutiny, a thesis-less critique of the queer reclamation of family as a thing we get to have, and an extended piece on the 2014 Gaza war that is mostly other people's social media posts (and no evidence that permission was given for publication of those posts).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is not Abuse is the best book I have read this year, bar none. Even when I disagreed Sarah always made me think, question my own beliefs and tease out how my own patterns of managing conflict impacted others, especially in individual conflict and in the many political groups I have been a member.Basically Sarah says that conflict and abuse are conflated which can lead to a victimization mindset, ruin relationships and break up political and community groups. Sarah also notes that global conflicts have the same roots as interpersonal and group struggles. Projection and denial and differing values based in race, class, gender and personality are the sources of conflict and that to heal there must be an understanding of these sources and the dynamic it has created. I agree with Sarah about projection and denial in interpersonal and group dynamics but am not convinced that projection and denial is the most salient cause of global conflict. This is when Sarah's concepts become unhelpful generalizations. Yes, it plays a part but it is not sufficient. I also disagreed with Sarah that survivors of sexual abuse and domestic violence are main disruptors of individual relationships and political groups. It is a double edge sword to place blame on the blameless and add to the pigeon holding of survivors. It's hurtful and maddening to survivors to be seen as a malignant force. This may be true that this dynamic can occur and it makes sense that survivors would have distortions of thinking and may act out but this is stereotypical and harmful. Sometimes because of abuse survivors have the ability to cut right through the drama and dynamic right in front of them and call it out. Seeing bullshit all their lives make them exquisitely perceptive and they know how to create boundaries and when and whom it makes sense to talk to. It is hard to know whether this is Sarah's projections, based in her own experience or not.I also believe that cut-offs are especially problematic and hard. It is really heartbreaking to have a friend walk away without warning and block communication. It had happened to me and is so painful. I have never walked away from somebody but I have fought with somebody and disengaged from them even when they wanted to try to mend the relationship. I can’t say there was really any reason except fear. It is hard for me to decide whether to try to engage again and if/when trying to do so is productive. In any case, Conflict is not Abuse, is a beautiful and profound book that will keep with asking questions and remaining woke to the issues and that is a wonderful gift.