Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman

In this session, we’ll be reading Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman.

Connecting subjects as varied as Israel/Palestine, police treatment of Blacks in America, sexual attraction, and the avoidance tactic of choosing text vs a phone call, Schulman addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating, how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to avoid facing themselves. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman shows how cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.