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Extraordinary New Title in the Basque Book Series Basque Violence: Metaphor and Sacrament, by Joseba Zulaika. University of Nevada Press This timely book captures the complexity and humanity of one of the most agonizing of contemporary problems--that of terrorist violence. Basque Violence is, in fact, a pioneering attempt to give a fully contextualized, cultural account of the endemic conflict engaging Basque villagers both as protagonists and spectators. By using the tools of cultural anthropology, this book provides the first ethnographic analysis of this politically explosive situation. Set in the village of Itziar in the Basque Country, Zulaika serves both as native son and interpreter of its cultura and violence. Many of the Basque activists discussed by the author are friends from his youth, now lionized by the villagers despite the fact that their actions become increasingly problematic for the villagers themselves. Far from being the work of a "terrorism expert" seeking counterinsurgency solutions or concentrating on the usual search for the causes and consequences of violence, this study attempts instead to understand the conscious and unconscious presuppositions of the violence. The author becomes the narrator of a drama of Homeric proportions in which ordinary men are forced into acts of heroism and errors of tragic consequence. Zulaika presents various narratives to illustrate the villagers' perception of history as myth, war, heroism, and tragedy; he also examines radical transformations in the society's basic socio-economic institutions. He then turns his attention to cultural models of performance such as popular games, hunting, troubadorial singing, and traditional mythology--all of which he believes affect the ongoing conflict. Zulaika argues that ritualization of action, as patterned after analogous folk models, is an essential component of the violence. Furthermore, the author examines the tension between metaphor and sacrament-- between nationalist violence interpreted as myth and metaphor as opposed to violence experienced with the literalness of Catholic sacrament. After receiving his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton University in 1982, Joseba Zulaika returned to his homeland where he served, most recently, as associate professor of symbolic anthropology at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastián, Spain. He is currently engaged in additional fieldwork on political violence funded by a multiyear grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. The dust jacket of Basque Violence was designed by internationally renowned Basque sculptor and artist Eduardo Chillida. |
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