Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History Book

This book is very tightly argued, very well written and extremely engaging. It charts the shift in the fortunes of the idea of post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as being an incredibly smart intervention into the literature on shame. The critique of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is made carefully and with full acknowlegment of the strengths and intentions of that argument, however, Leys shows how the concentration on shame, at the expense of guilt, brings into being the worst kind of self-centred identity politics; a kind of politics of difference without ethics, responsibility, or the possibility of dispute results. Leys' critique of Agamben is also both effective and devastating. In sum, the book is yet another incisive intervention into trauma studies by the author, but also should have broader interest to anyone interested in the limitations of contemporary articulations of identity politics.