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vdarcangelo's review against another edition
3.0
http://ensuingchapters.com/2014/06/21/a-trinity-of-science-and-spirituality/
Blood: A Critique of Christianity
Gil Anidjar
I’m not sure where to begin with Blood, except to say that it may well be defining its own genre. It’s challenging, bloodcontroversial, lyrical, overly referential, meandering, meta-everything and modest.
OK, I lied about the last one. This book is quite full of itself.
But don’t take that as a bad thing. It’s a book that demands its own terms, and I respect any author willing to challenge their reader. Anidjar does present a challenge. The fault, though, is that he doesn’t appear to address it to the reader.
Reading this felt like missing the first day of class and coming to the second with no review. There is a conversation happening that I don’t seem to be a part of. Perhaps that’s because I’m a lay reader. Academics and the many readers smarter than me may have better luck, but I struggled with this one.
While that’s partly on me, there is also a lack of clarity in Anidjar’s writing. He has a penchant for winding sentences, extended parentheticals and pivots of thought that left me in the weeds. He strikes me as a brilliant thinker, but struggles with communicating those ideas.
Again, this is partly on me and partly on him.
This is a worthy challenge for any reader.
Blood: A Critique of Christianity
Gil Anidjar
I’m not sure where to begin with Blood, except to say that it may well be defining its own genre. It’s challenging, bloodcontroversial, lyrical, overly referential, meandering, meta-everything and modest.
OK, I lied about the last one. This book is quite full of itself.
But don’t take that as a bad thing. It’s a book that demands its own terms, and I respect any author willing to challenge their reader. Anidjar does present a challenge. The fault, though, is that he doesn’t appear to address it to the reader.
Reading this felt like missing the first day of class and coming to the second with no review. There is a conversation happening that I don’t seem to be a part of. Perhaps that’s because I’m a lay reader. Academics and the many readers smarter than me may have better luck, but I struggled with this one.
While that’s partly on me, there is also a lack of clarity in Anidjar’s writing. He has a penchant for winding sentences, extended parentheticals and pivots of thought that left me in the weeds. He strikes me as a brilliant thinker, but struggles with communicating those ideas.
Again, this is partly on me and partly on him.
This is a worthy challenge for any reader.
leonkukkuk's review
3.0
It started reading a bit like Lacan - lots of words, little meaning - but soon settled down into a fascinating, but very comprehensive narrative with lots of name dropping. The book ranges very wide, dipping deeper into issues here and there, somewhat randomly but perhaps where the author feels more comfortable. It would be difficult to digest all in a single reading. The section on Purity of Blood and race is a worthwhile section. Also the section on Melville and blood. But that section makes the section on Freud feel somewhat superficial. Overall a good read. There are parts I will come back too. Maybe even the whole thing at some point.
harisadurrani's review against another edition
4.0
Great read - fascinating exploration of the pervasiveness of "blood" in its many yet contiguous, overflowing forms. The references to Greg Bear's Blood Music, Italo Calvino, and Batman were also titillating. The discussion of "liquid modernity" and the pervasive flow of blood was particularly interesting, especially as relates to law existing even where it is not (see the Calvino and the "Leviathan and the Blood-Pump" sections). Some parts I felt could have been elaborated upon further, but I may have to re-read this at a later date in order to fully absorb and understand the breadth and intricacy of the discussion. I loved Anidjar's admission in the beginning about the problematics of the discourse on violence/war and about the seemingly increasing futility of many academic discourses ("consider this the project of some premodernity," he confesses/laments). "The Vampire State" chapter was also pretty solid. Overall, closer to 3.75.
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