レビュー

• ゼノフォビアの本質に迫る労作

  Xenophobia（外国人恐怖症） という言葉はギリシア語のξένος" （xenos 外国人）と φόβος"（phobos 恐怖）に由来する。そのため私はこの言葉は古代ギリシャから来たのではないか、と何となく考えていた。しかし著者によると古代ギリシャにはこの語の用例は一件もなく、近代の造語であるとのことだ。 1880年ごろ、心理学者が非理性的な恐怖心（phobia）は病理の一種であることを示した。claustrophobia （閉所恐怖症）やacrophbia（高所恐怖症）などの用語が一般的になり、それらと並んで、xenophobiaという言葉も使われるようになったという。 この言葉が歴史の表舞台に出ることになったのは、1900年であった。パリ万国博覧会が開かれ、アジアやアフリカの文化が紹介されていたころ、中国では義和団の乱が起き、パリ市民の不安は高まった。山東省で始まった宗教的秘密結社による排外主義運動が、清国の西太后の支持を得ることで、欧米列国に宣戦布告するに至ったのだ。この事件をフランスの新聞が上海発の記事として”xénophobe” movement（外国人排斥運動）として伝えたのが端緒となった。 ヨーロッパ人が中国での外国人排斥運動に恐怖を感じたことは間違いないが、中国人の立場にしてみれば侵略者を嫌悪するのは当然の感情である。特に宣教師が「キリストの愛と平等」を説く一方で西洋諸国による侵略の正当化に寄与していたことは、（たとえ宣教師自身は純粋な宗教心から行動していたとしても）偽善的行為ととらえられても仕方ない。 ここまでが本書の導入部分であり、そこから外国人恐怖症に関する様々な面が議論されていくことになる。話が多岐にわたるので読むのに骨が折れるが、その苦労は十分に報われる内容である。

• Excelente obra

  Un excelente libro.que aborda de manera profunda y detallada uno de los temas más relevantes, polémicos y que en momentos es difícil definir. El autor realiza una investigación profunda y su narración es muy clara. Excelente libro, lo recomiendo.

• At least six stars!

  "Don't talk to strangers" -- the pervasive imperative from adults to children -- is just one piece of evidence of how far we have gone into an irrational amount of fear of "the other." We have forgotten that to them, we are "the other." Yes, paranoia is normalized in our culture. Too many friends retort: "Just because it's paranoia, it doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you." Or, the know-it-all and ridiculous precepts from a poor and superficial understanding of biology and business: "only the paranoid survive." Isn't it clear that even the paranoid die? And worse, they seemingly suffer all the way to the "end.." Makari, whose first two books, A Revolution in Mind, and The Soul Machine, are two of the best books of history and psychology (and philosophy and sociology, and...) I have read, and thoroughly enjoyed every page, did it again! In fact, he topped those wonderful, eye-opening and informative tomes with a shorter and surprisingly even more relevant book for our time. Makari is not only a doctor of psychiatry, but clearly a superb historian and a highly talented author. If you are observing and are concerned about all the anti-immigrant, protectionist, us-vs-them mentality, rising popularity of strongman, and the manifest outcomes of all that: bloody wars in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, mass-killings; or non-bloody kind: trade-wars, techno-wars... read this book. And talk about it to your neighbors and friends... Makari has distilled a very impressive amount of history and other scholarly effort to understand and explain the nature and root causes of xenophobia from the ancients, written, but unnamed, in classics, to the newer forms in early days of the Columbus exchange and slavery and colonialism, all the way to the Great War, how it destroyed the fragile liberal order, and Second World War the Holocaust and the Cold War, its end which resulted in the ongoing troubles in ex-Yugoslavia and ex-Soviet countries. The book is organized well in two larger parts, the history of xenophobia and the mental and social background of xenophobia. And, it then finishes with a shorter third part where Makari wraps it all up by showing how xenophobia can be modelled as a regress from stranger anxiety, to overt and covert forms of xenophobia. Las Casas, Diderot, Rousseau, Conrad, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Foucault, and many more who puzzled over and attempted to crack this challenge are all presented in a very coherent and readable way. It all ends, thank God, and thank you dear George Makari, with a positive and hopeful note, and an extensive one, why and how we can come out of this latest incarnation of a nightmare that has been with us since the early days of the cognitive revolution, who knows maybe about 50 thousand years ago, when we learned to talk to each other and said, "who the hell is that guy? Probably a foe. And even if not, what does she want from me?" We will learn to coexist, to get along, to love, let alone live and let live. Won't we?

• Comprehensive, enlightening and beautifully written

  Like Revolution in Mind, his masterful history of psychoanalysis, Makari in this book takes a complex and contested subject and manages to make it imminently readable. His erudition is stunning, his fair and open mind is refreshing (especially these days), and his writing is as clear as spring water. I teach a graduate-level course on "Identity and Conflict" and am adding this book to my syllabus -- but it is so accessible that I would recommend it to any thoughtful person.

• Brilliant.

  I wish everyone could read this book. Especially in this new age of hatred, the insights, history, even the approach: all excellent.

購入リンク