Sacrificial Limbs - by Salih Can Aciksoz (Paperback)

About the Book

"Sacrificial Limbs chronicles the everyday lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey's Kurdish war, one of the most volatile conflicts in the Middle East. Through nuanced ethnographic portraits, Aðc¸ksèoz examines how veterans' experiences of war and disability are closely linked to class, gender, and ultimately the embrace of ultranationalist right-wing politics. Bringing the reader into military hospitals, commemorations, political demonstrations, and veterans' everyday spaces of care, intimacy, and activism, Sacrificial Limbs provides a vivid analysis of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that fashion veterans' bodies, political subjectivities, and communities. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in anthropology, masculinity, and disability"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Sacrificial Limbs chronicles the everyday lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey's Kurdish war, one of the most volatile conflicts in the Middle East. Through nuanced ethnographic portraits, Açiksöz examines how veterans' experiences of war and disability are closely linked to class, gender, and ultimately the embrace of ultranationalist right-wing politics. Bringing the reader into military hospitals, commemorations, political demonstrations, and veterans' everyday spaces of care, intimacy, and activism, Sacrificial Limbs provides a vivid analysis of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that fashion veterans' bodies, political subjectivities, and communities. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in anthropology, masculinity, and disability.

Review Quotes

"Sacrificial Limbs brings a critical approach to the often Eurocentric field of disability studies and contributes to gender studies and masculinity studies in the Middle East. Açıksöz's perspectives on sacrificial crisis, sovereignty, and authoritarianism will encourage debates about the anthropology of state and conspiracy, disappointment, and crisis and temporality."-- "American Ethnologist"

"Açıksöz effectively reminds us of how otherwise unmarked bodies in theories of sovereignty and biopolitics (and necropolitics) are already always gendered, classed, and ethno-racialized in specific ways."-- "Anthropology Book Forum"

"Brings together meticulous ethnographic insight with rigorous conceptual analysis. . . . Açıksöz has written a beautiful ethnography that provides rare insight into the intimate lives of the protagonists of ultranationalist politics. It is a book that approaches its interlocutors with critical empathy, seeking to understand and lay bare what propels them to become protagonists in deadly violence."-- "Kurdish Studies"

"Can we still understand the suffering of the people whose politics are offensive to our worldviews if they are simultaneously threatening us or the people sharing our political stance? In Sacrificial Limbs, an ethnography of the disabled veterans and martyrs' families in Turkey, Salih Can Açıksöz asks and answers this question by inhabiting a 'grey zone' and by writing critically, tragically and beautifully from within it."-- "Social Anthropology"

"This is the kind of book one would point to as a textbook example of ethnographic description or, if you like, of 'thick description'. But the thickness under consideration does not just mean a mass of statements lumped together by a certain thematic resemblance but rather indicates an eloquently weaved narrative that moves, unsettles, and affects the reader."-- "Cultural Studies"

"Moving in its description and insightful in its analysis, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey provides timely and important contributions to the study of nationalism, sovereignty, violence, masculinity, and embodiment. The author's discussion of prostheses and their political significance is particularly fascinating."-- "Ethnos"

"Sacrificial Limbs weaves an extremely well-written and caring ethnography with important theoretical insights. It is a must-read for those interested in contemporary political dynamics in Turkey and the Middle East. . . . It is no surprise that this elegant ethnography has won several prestigious book awards including the 2021 New Millennium Book Award by the Society of Medical Anthropology and 2020 Fatema Mernisi Award by MESA (Middle Eastern Studies Association). It is highly recommended to political anthropologists."

-- "Political and Legal Anthropology Review"

"An elegantly woven narrative that goes well beyond its manifest ethnographic aim and reads as an astute commentary on the recent past and present of Turkish politics. Combining theoretical rigor with ethnographic finesse, Sacrificial Limbs is an essential read for scholars of gender, disability, militarism, and political violence."-- "Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"

"Offers a timely, rare, and robust look at the making and unmaking of political subjectivities, communities, and the state through a profound analysis of conscripts' experiences of war and bodily loss."-- "New Perspectives on Turkey"

"The strength of Sacrificial Limbs is twofold: on one hand, it delves deeply into the history of Turkish politics, culture, and social life while at the same time it opens up to a broader sphere of applicability for those interested in gender, sexuality, disability, nationalism, and politics."-- "Disability Studies Quarterly"

"The book is equally a work of political anthropology and medical anthropology and would easily be at home in upper- level undergraduate or graduate courses about either subject. With its careful attention to the sociocultural and political, and the embodiment of disabled masculinity, the book is also an exemplary contribution to the burgeoning field of disability anthropology, and one that clearly demonstrates how work on disability can push medical anthropology to attend to the political in new ways."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly"

"An engaging, sophisticated contribution to the literature on conflict studies, political violence, medical anthropology, gender studies, and disability studies, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey is likely to put Turkey on the map of world anthropology as never before."-- "Conflict and Society"

About the Author

Salih Can Açiksöz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles.