Blood and Nation: The European Aesthetics of Race

Abstract

Throughout its history, Europe has been marked by xenophobia and intolerance often leading to violent intergroup conflicts. Uli Linke explores how extensions of blood imagery used in language became a way of expressing cultural superiority -- and breed violence even today. Linke traces the concept of blood and its metaphorical significance from pre-Christian times to the post-World War II period. She first examines the mythic implications of blood as representative of kinship, womanhood, and masculine physicality in early Europe, and then shows how blood became the symbol of male domination in medieval times and how its reference eventually shifted from gender to ethnicity and ultimately to race. This was demonstrated by the Nazis' emphasis on blood purity and persists today in modern Germany with fears of over-foreignization and renewed articulations of violence.

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