Off With Their Heads!

Beheadings are back in the news, thanks to the savagery of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS). Not only do people know about these acts, but they can even see the videos on the Internet.

Then again, beheadings are nothing new. They are an ancient practice, most famously during the French Revolution. The Amazonians shrunken heads are well known. That is why anthropologist Frances Larson wonders in her book, “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found”:
“What can we learn about our common humanity from this, the ultimate image of inhumanity?”

Larson mentions something that I didn’t realize until, well, she said it: decapitation almost always has had a political angle to it. Let me quote her from her interview:
“Decapitation is an inherently visual form of murder, because it produces a trophy that stands as proof of conquest. It creates something that is made to be displayed, and it presupposes an audience to watch. It also requires huge force to decapitate someone. It is a brutal show of power.”
And also:
“[The head is] the only body part that can publicly confirm a person’s death.”

In the Internet age, videos like those from ISIS get a whole lot more views than at any other time in history. For exactly that reason, some form of a baby-step response has started on social media sites. Like the #ISISmediablackout hashtag that was started in response by Twitter users.

Larson, as a consequence of her research for the book, isn’t optimistic that as a species we are moving away (overall) from such acts:
“If there was another world war, who knows what desperate hatreds would emerge again, and what activities—like taking the skulls of the enemy as trophies, which happened during the Second World War—could be overlooked by people supporting their troops fighting for their lives in terrible conditions. We like to think that we can take the moral high ground, but writing this book has taught me to be wary of assuming we are above certain activities, or incapable of undertaking them.”

I know it’s not a positive note to the end the blog on, but that’s reality, whether we like it or not.

Comments

  1. KumarNovember 17, 2014 at 3:58 PM

    Not only beheading became famous due to the French Revolution, but it was common in England too. Queen Elizabeth the first has the dubious distinction of being as much a great be-header as a great nation builder! While most societies are tending to be disinclined towards this brutality since then, most Islamic terrorists firmly believe in beheading even today, since they feel certain that the fear induced would turn things in their favor.

    While I cannot help agreeing with your not-so-positive ending note, namely that "one cannot hope mankind is tending above certain activities and meanness" etc. I recall a German Lieutenant General's remark in a Hollywood WW II movie at this juncture. There was a shootout of captured Allies soldiers by his own army as he was about the assume command. The Allies sent a messenger to him demanding why the atrocity against Convention was done, which they came to know through a soldier who managed to escape the shootout. After sending away the messenger with some reply, the Lieutenant General picks up the phone and full of anger shouts at the commanding officer who was above his rank, "Why did you do that? Do you know by doing it, you are making every enemy solider doggedly determined to fight us, to defeat us, to crush us. Don't you see are pitting me against them. And, you want me to win this battle!" His senior feels the intensity of his junior's expression, a soldier known for his courage, skill and patriotism. He only mumbles pretenses and urges the junior officer to fight on instead of threatening court-marshal.

    I too hope that beheading should turn the tide against terrorists making us all stand up in togetherness, in our mind at least, against such inhuman-beyond-measure ways of terrorists to win. And let time tell.

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