Blood

"This book is bound to become a standard against which future scholarship on the cultural history of Christianity and several related fields will be evaluated. It achieves the feat of offering an exhaustive genealogy of the significance of “blood” in Western civilization, thereby pulling blood into an urgently needed visibility."—Elisabeth Weber, University of California, Santa Barbara

"This is an original reading of the place of blood in Christian theology and religion, and its far-reaching impact on the history and cultural practices of the West. It is distinguished by the singular voice of its author, who is at once fiercely critical, ironic, contemptuous, erudite, and enlightening as he engages thinkers both living and dead on the relationship between blood and its many metaphoric and literal representations. This is not a conventional book in any way, it is a manifesto, a call, if not to arms, then to recognition of the fact that western thought, its social and political organization, is infused with Christianity, even if those influenced by it are not practicing Christians in any religious sense."—Joan W. Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor, Institute for Advanced Study

"As in all his writings, Gil Anidjar always surprises us by seeing connections where others have missed them. In this challenging book, he brilliantly excavates the meanings of blood in Christianity as well as how those meanings persist in our world in barely secularized form."—David Biale, Author of Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians

"Blood is first of all language, style, thought in writing. Blood is relentlessly compelling, a joyful destruction of trivialities, a delight of erudition. Blood is moved by epistemic urgency and internal critique, it answers the need for historical perspective, guided by the desire to understand what we are politically made of. Blood looks at the way blood speaks and is spoken, how it governs and rules over us, how it shapes the Christian nation, the state and the economy. Our obsession with blood is not a thing of the past, it is our absolute present time. Blood is not a metaphor, it is an organizing principle. Blood is not what Harvey discovered, something that would always have been known to us. It is what the Eucharist partakes of and brings up: the community of blood, blood piety - soon the purity of blood. And from these are derived our theory and politics, kinship and race, science and religion, literature and dreams, technology and bodies. Blood is an exceptionally powerful and fascinating object to be read, kept on a shelf - and meditated."—Dominique Pestre, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

"In this highly original book Gil Anidjar deconstructs “Christianity” into its element: blood. In doing so he demonstrates, with impressive skill, the ubiquity of blood – and its metamorphoses – in Christian history. In this exploration of the circulation of blood as the life of nation, state, and capital, the reader is presented with an extraordinary account of modernity no less. Scholars of modernity will learn to see “Christianity” as something at once more and less than “religion” – even though it is, as Anidjar argues, the (misleading) prototype of all “religions.” This is a work to be read carefully and its implications pondered over."—Talal Asad, CUNY Graduate Center