The Oxford English Dictionary defines biblioclasm as "breaking books" and is cited as first in print in 1864 in a text on religious theory. It can be argued that when biblioclasm occurs, it is because books (as well as art) are at the “center of interest of all civilized people. Group dynamics strongly influence the development of consensual values and the transformation of values into actions.
Toward an Understanding of the Hedonic Component of Vandalism.” In Vandalism: Behavior and Motivations, ed. Modern extremists (like their predecessors, the French radicals) have embraced the idea that books and libraries are idols of the status quo. Books and libraries were generally the property of the monarchy, a small group of aristocrats, and religious institutions.
For example, progress in one area such as education—teaching truth and exposing error—would result in progress in others (Gay, 1969). Influential figures included the 16th-century humanist Louis LeRoy, who believed that the cumulative weight of the past weighed down the present and stifled originality; and Jean Jacques Rousseau, a leading figure in the "vanity of learning" movement, who feared that "the decadent influence of learning, no matter how true," would hinder the progress of the reading public (Thiem 1979, 518). In the twentieth century, "relegation of religion to trivial leisure [became] a peculiar modern Western phenomenon" (Bruce 2000, 40).
As committed defenders of the doctrine of national security and "protectors of the nation's tradition, prosperity and public order," the junta saw it as its duty to attack foreign forces and ideas that sought to undermine the unity, Argentine values, and inner purity of the nation (Staub 1989, 215).
Grappling for Voice and Power
Schutte, historian and chairman associated with the Nederlands-Zuid Afrikaans Vereniging (NZAV), despaired: “The books that were found were mostly on the same shelf. The other was the South African Institute, a library established in 1930 as part of the University of Amsterdam. The library was mainly used by scholars and students critical of the country [South Africa].
Both governments provided money for cultural interactions, and the NZAV became the "de facto executor of the Agreement on the Dutch side" (Fennema 1984a). In the United States, anti-apartheid was a fundamental part of the civil rights movement as it radicalized during the 1960s and 1970s. Didn't the same thing happen at the beginning of the Nazi era in Germany?" (De Groot 1984).
In the aftermath of the attack, the NZAV's fundamental commitment to dialogue was reaffirmed. The publication of the documents and commentary contributed to the polarization of social dialogue around responses to apartheid. Signals to South Africa: The Australian Anti-Apartheid Movement.” In politics of the future: the role of social movements, eds.
In Kashmir, the politics were darker and the authority of the Indian state even more in jeopardy. Linguistic consciousness became an integral part of the Tamil worldview during this time (Wilson. From the beginning "the library developed as part of the Jaffna psyche and the desire of its people to attain higher levels of education " (Sambandan. 2003).
It was an effort to win back the trust of the Tamil people (Francis 2003). The Minister of Media publicly lamented the destruction of the library as an "evil act", a product of hatred and misguided policies of the previous government (Peris 2001). Some of the worst excesses were in Karbala and Basra, where, according to one housewife, “it is a model for any government.
Introduction: Communities, Riots, Survivors – The South Asian Experience." In Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia, ed. Popular Perceptions of the Violence: A Provincial View." In Sri Lanka in Change and Crisis, ed.
Absolute Power and the Drive to Purify Society
This series produced "the richest collection of homosexual studies of all time in the fields of history, literature, art, music and psychology" (Garde 1964, 675). Everything that was good, beautiful and true - the classic German heritage - was rejected, despised and undermined. In one of the consulting rooms, they used a mop to knock down a pantostat used in the treatment of patients.
Social outsiders and building the community of the people." In Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany, eds. The Pink Triangle: Homosexuals as 'Enemies of the State.'” In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, eds. Because of these accounts, we have a window into the motivation of the Khmer Rouge.
Saloth Sar, a French-educated intellectual renamed Pol Pot, emerged as leader of the Khmer Rouge. Their failure to fight the Khmer Rouge placed them in the camp of the enemy. French books in particular were targeted, because French was the language of the educated and "the language that made contact with the outside world possible" (Criddle and Mam 1987, 31).
During the communist regime, an estimated 80 percent of written works in the Khmer language were lost (Ledgerwood 1990). The people who were driven out of the city, both the townspeople and the refugees, were labeled 'the new people' because they had not 'joined' the revolution until the fall of Phnom Penn (Chandler 1999, 1). Governing the country as if it were a battlefield erased the rural traditions: the folk and formal arts, the village crafts, the dance, the music and the storytelling.”
Fortunately, most of the small collection in the National Museum survived, albeit in complete disarray (Jarvis 1989, 389). In a May 1989 interview, Chheng Phon, an artist who had survived the Khmer Rouge regime to become Cambodia's Minister of Information and Culture, wrestled with the question of how a people's culture could help "the moral intellect of the world" (Young 1990, 12). They were quickly seized by the most dangerous impulses of the post-Enlightenment – the desire to achieve utopia.
But during the civil war and the siege of the city by the Taliban, the building, once The Khmer Rouge called their sought-after paradise "Year Zero"; The Taliban called theirs "the rule of Sharia" (Bergen 2002).
War, Power Vacuum, and Anarchy
By the end of their occupation, the Nazis had destroyed approximately six million Poles (including three million Jews) and three quarters of Poland's written heritage. They killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos and burned most of the libraries and archives in the Philippine Islands. From the more restrained wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was built a doctrinal platform for waging total war.
By World War II, the vision of Erich von Ludendorff (who commanded German troops in the previous war) had been realized: war had become "the highest expression of the racial will to live" (Wallach 1986, 15). Violence against cultural materials and institutions was an organized part of the Nazi master plan for domination (Borin 1993). The archetype of reciprocity is the use of the atomic bomb on Japan by the United States.
College and university libraries were prime targets; for example, a quarter of a million valuable books and manuscripts (some irreplaceable) were lost in the Japanese bombing of Nankai University in Tianjin in 1937. By the end of the war, Manila had also lost its National Library, the University of the Philippines Library , religious archives and many private properties (Zaide 1990). By the end of the war, the bombing had resulted in the destruction of 131 German cities, in which 600,000 civilians were killed and three and a half million homes were destroyed (Sebald 2003).
American commanders were horrified by the suicidal resistance that led to the loss of 97 percent of the Japanese troops defending Saipan and, in the same battle, the "carnival of death" in which 10,000 Japanese civilians committed mass suicide (Frank 1999, 72). The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945 marked the end of the war and a milestone in the development of total war. Glows of the Soul: The Destruction of Jewish Books and Libraries in Poland During World War II." Libraries and Culture.
The heavy loss of life and the destruction of most of the cultural institutions in the area certainly reinforced it. Fierce fighting on the ground was only one aspect of the Nigerian civil war. By the twentieth century, Western opinion of this practice had changed and there were international codes against the destruction of culture.
