Conflict is Not Abuse

Sarah Schulman illuminates the differences between Conflict and Abuse in this revelatory book that addresses the contemporary culture of scapegoating.

Sarah Schulman: Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island, and on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

PART ONE: THE CONFLICTED SELF AND THE ABUSIVE STATE Chapter One: In Love: Conflict Is Not Abuse --The Dangerous Flirt -- Email, Text and Negative Escalation --Reductive Modes of Illogic Chapter Two: Conceding The Personal: The State and The Production of Abuse --Understanding is More Important Than Determining The Victim --Authentic Relationships of Depth vs Bonding By Bullying --When The Community Encourages Over-Reaction --Using The "Abuse" Apparatus As A Smokescreen Chapter Three: The Police and The Politics of Overstating Harm --The Police as Arbiters of Relationships --"Violence", Violence and the Harm of Mis-Naming Harm --Calling The Police On Incidental Violence --Calling The Police on The Wrong Person When It's Your Father Who Should Have Gone to Jail Chapter Four: HIV Criminalization In Canada: How The Richest Middle Class in the World Decide to Call The Police On HIV Positive People in Order to Cover Up Their Guilt and Anxiety about Sexuality, Their Racism, and a Supremacy Based Investment In Punishment --Privileges and Problem Solving in the Canadian and US Contexts --Think Twice Before Calling The Police --The Racial Roots of Canadian HIV Criminalization --Viral Load and The State --Being "Abused" Instead of Responsible as State Policy --Criminalizing Human Experience --Women As Monsters --Crimes That Can't Occur --Claiming Abuse As Excuses for Control --Claims of Abuse As Assertion of Normativity --Friends Don't Let Friends Call The Police PART TWO: THE IMPULSE TO ESCALATE Chapter Five: On Escalation --Supremacy Ideology As A Refusal of Knowledge --Traumatized Behavior: When Knowledge Becomes Unbearable. --Interrupting Escalation Before It Produces Tragedy --Control at the Center of Supremacy and Traumatized Behavior --The Making of Monsters As Delusional Thinking --The Cultural Habit of Acknowledging Distorted Thinking --The Denial Of Mental Illness Chapter Six: Manic Flight Reaction: Trigger + Shunning --The Trigger As Over-Reaction --Trigger + Shunning #1: Manic Flight Reaction (Historical Psychoanalysis) --Trigger + Shunning #2: Borderline Episode (Psychiatry and Pop Psychology) --Biological Consequences of Trauma on the Brain --Trigger + Shunning #3: Fight Flight Freeze (Mindfulness) --Trigger + Shunning #3: Detaching With An Axe (Al-Anon) --Conclusion: Bad Friends and Delay Chapter Seven: Queer Families, Compensatory Motherhood and The Political Culture of Escalation --Good Families Don't Hurt Other People --Queer Families and Supremacy Ideology --Queer Families and The State --Compensatory Motherhood and the Need To Blame --The Family As Justification for Cruelty PART THREE: SUPREMACY/TRAUMA AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF INJUSTICE: The ISRAELI WAR ON GAZA Chapter Eight: Watching Genocide Unfold in Real Time: The Killing of Gaza Through Facebook and Twitter --The Strategy of False Accusation --When We Need To Be "Abused", The Truth Doesn't Matter --People In Solidarity With Palestine Cannot Shun CONCLUSION: THE DUTY OF REPAIR --What's So Impossible About Apologizing for Your Part? --Friendship and Solidarity --People In Solidarity With Palestine Cannot Shun