Not really sure how that's a contradiction, but decapitation is definitely both of those other things. i have read that book of short stories, Severance: Stories, which had a fantastic premise that it just didn't live up to, while this book is just straight-up scholarship that doesn't try to be narrative, and yet its subject matter is compelling enough that you don't mind the dryness of its tone, or its occasionally puzzling distinctions:Äecapitation is a contradiction in terms because it is both brutal and effective." It's pretty fascinating stuff, and not a subject i ever expected to see, much less read an entire book devoted to, but once you see it, you know you have to read it. chapters include: shrunken heads, trophy heads (war), deposed heads (executions/guillotine/war), framed heads - the severed head in (or AS) art, potent heads (relics), bone heads (phrenology - stolen heads/anthropology), dissected heads - (medical school, discomfort), living heads (cryogenics, galvanization). this book is an academic overview of all the ways in which severed heads have played a part in human history. Who knew there were so many things to say about human heads? not human minds, with all their psychological bells and whistles, nooks and crannies, but just… heads. Decapitation is the ultimate tyranny but it is also an act of creation, because, for all its cruelty, it produces an extraordinarily potent artefact that compels our attention whether we like it or not.
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