Robin Morgan's The Demon Lover - Books - People & Culture

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The Demon Lover. On the Sexuality of Terrorism
by Robin Morgan

Rocío (2010) suggested people in an Advanced course at the state-run language school EOI Getafe in Spain discussed gender issues and their teacher prepared some resource reading, to inspire the group to look for interesting texts and do some reading before dealing with such a sensitive topic.

Here is an excerpt of this book, so full of interesting insight as well as factual information. We hope it is useful as part of resource materials to prepare a Discussion on Gender Issues.

Book Covers Table of Contents 1 & 2 Chapter 1: beginning 1 & 2 Chapter 1: ending 1 & 2

Listen to these excerpts on the Talking People Podcast!

Check out Robin Morgan's Official Website

Synopsis from Robin Morgan's website

One of the most widely translated of Morgan's books, The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism was Cassandra-like in its prescience: 1989. It broke new ground as the first in-depth feminist analysis of violence.

Viewing the problem as the "eroticization of violence"--the sexual charisma that violence has come to exude--Morgan traces terrorism through multiple contexts, including the political, cultural, and mythic; violent insurgence by the Left as well as by the Right, and officially sanctioned terrorism by the State and by organized religion, all come under her scrutiny.

Terrorist acts are overwhelmingly committed by men, and Morgan locates those acts on a continuum of violence that is now so "normal" as to be deemed, simply "manhood." She analyzes "Token Terrorist" women, too--including herself, in a revealing personal chronicle of her activities in the 1960s. Also explored are women's cross-cultural attitudes toward violence. Here, for the first time, Palestinian women speak movingly of their struggle to survive as women, through extraordinary interviews Morgan conducted in refugee camps. A final chapter, "Beyond Terror," sets forth a compelling vision of hope for the future, in which the patriarchal thirst for death is slaked, and a new "politics of Eros" blooms.

395 pages, cloth and paperback

See also this site's listing forThe Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, Updated, Second Edition (Washington Square Press, 2001)