J. P. Linstroth

This book brings together theoretical knowledge from diverse fields as anthropology, biology, neurology, peace studies, political science, psychology, and sociology to address key challenges that transcend borders. It demonstrates how differences are created on many levels to reveal how the “othering project” is evident through national policies of immigration, through aspiring nationalisms, through genocidal inhumanity, and the subsequent effects of such othering evident in racial trauma. It further argues that we cannot limit our understanding of racism to forms of “white nationalism” or “whiteness movements” in the developed world and regions but look to the global formulation of such discrimination in colonial histories. The book introduces each chapter by providing rich ethnographic narratives from informants based upon the author’s research on nationalism, racism, genocide, terrorism, trauma, scientific tolerance, and love and peace as well as some auto-ethnographic narratives from the author’s research on these themes.

This book brings together theoretical knowledge from diverse fields as anthropology, biology, neurology, peace studies, political science, psychology, and sociology to address key challenges that transcend borders. It demonstrates how differences are created on many levels to reveal how the “othering project” is evident through national policies of immigration, through aspiring nationalisms, through genocidal inhumanity, and the subsequent effects of such othering evident in racial trauma. It further argues that we cannot limit our understanding of racism to forms of “white nationalism” or “whiteness movements” in the developed world and regions but look to the global formulation of such discrimination in colonial histories. The book introduces each chapter by providing rich ethnographic narratives from informants based upon the author’s research on nationalism, racism, genocide, terrorism, trauma, scientific tolerance, and love and peace as well as some auto-ethnographic narratives from the author’s research on these themes.

In Epochal Reckonings, poet, adjunct professor and editorial writer, J.P. Linstroth describes and responds to some of the crises of the first years of the 21st century. He aims, as he puts it, to cause concern, discussion, and surprise, as well as to evoke the emotions of anger, empathy, and sadness. The events covered include the huge migrations of people seeking to cross borders, whether in the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle-East or Europe, hoping for safety and a better life. Linstroth also shows and comments on human and natural acts of astonishing violence: the 9/11 destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York; the Hurricane named Katrina of 2005; the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Linstroth portrays man's inhumanity to man, whether callous, careless, mistaken, or deliberate: the police-killings of African-American youths; the genocide of Brazilian indigenous peoples; the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison; mass school-shootings in the USA; and the Yemeni civil war. Linstroth describes his poetry as emergent and inchoate, outlining the struggles and sufferings of various groups during major crises in the 21st century, embodied by racism, extremism, violence, and tragedies too many to be told. These poems capture such calamities, defining their symbolic significance for many of those who have experienced these disasters of our times across the globe.

The Forgotten Shore is a fascinating volume of poetry, and according to the author, represents a kind of "archaeology of emotions" to be excavated and explored. At times, the language is difficult and confounding, as J. P. Linstroth often references Greek mythology and archaic speech. Yet, there is something profound about his poetry that draws the reader toward an inextricable communion with his personal emotions and his unique observations of the world. Somehow, there is something akin to Seamus Heaney in Linstroth's abstract poetic style and his linguistic fecundity. His poetry is at once challenging but also accessible. In all, it is a book of poetry to be cherished and read--and then read again.--Dr. Paul Gibbard, Senior Lecturer European Languages and Studies, The University of Western Australia

Marching against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland begins with the question: why is it so problematic for the majority of people in the Basque town of Hondarribia to accept the broader participation of women in their annual military march known as the Alarde? To explain this dispute, this study examines local history as well as the history of this unique parade, but most importantly considers how gender practices were and are organized. The controversy to extend female involvement in the Alarde resulted in two positions between betikoak traditionalists, (Betiko Alardearen Aldekoak, “Always the Town’s Alarde”), and local “feminists” (emakumealdekoak or Emakumeak JuanaMugarrietakoa, the Women of Mugarrietakoa, WJM), the former group wishing to preserve the ritual and the latter wanting to change it. These are not simply dichotomous stances but represent multiple levels of local identity through differing concepts of gender, history, and social experience. It will be shown throughout the Alarde’s long history (1639-present) that it represents several periods of militarism from the town’s defense in 1638 against French forces, Napoleonic resistance (1808-1813) to the Carlist Wars (1833-1840 and 1872-1876). The Alarde began as a religious procession and gradually incorporated more and more secular elements. In essence, by the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the Alarde became one of many “Basque celebrations” (Euskal jaiak), tying it to Basque nationalism. Marching against Gender Practice centers on gender analyses of two opposing gender worldviews between the betikoak traditionalists and WJM feminists, but it aims at being applicable to gender theories in general, especially how gender may be cognized and what cognitive processes and cognitive systems may be included in the cognition of gender. By implication, it is asserted that collective imagination is not an immutable or static concept but may represent locality, regionalism, and nationalism as well as imbue concepts of communality, individuality, gender, harmony, historical narration, memory, social organization, and tradition. Commemorative, historical or re-enactment rituals like the Alarde of Hondarribia explain the duration of local identity, its transformation over time, and newer expressions of identity, which are continually being contested and reaffirmed through collective imagination.