[lbo-talk] Bounty offered in Pakistan activist shooting

[andie_nachgeborenen]

Sounds right. Pure Nietzsche, with attention to women. What are called honor killings today or the formerly explicitly acknowledged cheating defense to murder, still respected in fact in many places, don't reflect the sort of honor at stake between Achilleus and Agamemnon (with Briseus as a prize) or between medieval knights. The conception of honor is totally different. If I were to speculate I would guess that it reflects the injured self worth of poor people in a patriarchal culture rather than an attempt to establish superiority of rank by risking all in mortal combat and winning (Hegel's version). One peasant's honor is not greater than another if all their wives, daughters, and sisters are virtuous by their standard. They can as it were lose honor but not gain it. We live in a post-Honor culture, and a good thing too.

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 12, 2012, at 9:52 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Andie: "Women were too insignificant. A peasant beating his wife might
> have derived an honor- surrogate from her humiliation, but lords
> obtained honor by defeating other lords in battle. Taking and raping
> their women was part of that, but it was like taking any other
> chattel,"
> 
> [WS:]  That is pretty much what Graeber argued - that women were the
> mere currency in the honor accounting - Lord A would humiliate Lord B
> by turning B's women into chattel.
> 
> For a peasant it was a different story - as you say.  But people who
> beat, humiliate and kill women today to defend "tradition" are mostly
> of peasant rather than aristocratic stock.
> 
> But again, the main point here is not who the victim is, but that male
> honor is contingent on the ability to humiliate others (whoever they
> are).  No humiliation, no honor.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Wojtek
> 
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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