Intimate Enemies

Reviews / Votes

"Extremely valuable and moving." (TLS) "What happened in Andean communities after the insurgency? Some community members, even those who had not fought with the Shining Path, had sympathized with it. Others, including army veterans and widows and orphans, had not. Kimberly Theidon, a medical anthropologist, describes their painful adjustments to coexistence. She shows that public confessions and apologies, healing rituals and storytelling, and degrees of punishment and reparation helped to 'settle accounts.' More than any other scholar of Peru's war, Theidon humanizes the legacy of the violence and indicates just how much the trauma still burdens Peru today." (Foreign Affairs) "What is it like for ordinary people to live through revolutionary violence and the state's repression of that violence? This stunning book offers amazing and troubling insight into the lives of peasants in highland Peru who endured the revolutionary and increasingly violent movement of the Shining Path and the onslaught of soldiers seeking to ferret out and destroy it. Kimberly Theidon describes vividly, through powerful stories and quotes, what happened to the people caught in the conflict. Her rich, ethnographic account also describes resilience in the face of suffering, moments of joy and caring, efforts to rebuild and to forget. This is not simply a story of human suffering, but also one of endurance and recovery." (Human Rights Quarterly ) "In her masterful ethnography of the legacies of violence in Ayacucho, Peru, Kimberly Theidon offers a critical intervention into discussions of postconflict reconstruction and transitional justice. Intimate Enemies exemplifies hauntingly the power of the ethnographic method and demonstrates eloquently what anthropology can offer contemporary debates. At a time when universities and in particular social science departments are coming under attack for their lack of demonstrable worth, this work makes a vital case for importance of long-term, extended fieldwork and reflection." (Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology) "In an age of knee-jerk common sense that trauma means PTSD, this fine ethnography reveals the deep and complex currents between collective experiences of violence, subjective ambivalence, memory, and a community's talk about terror that constitutes the uncommonsensical lived experience of survivors of Peru's era of violence and reconciliation. A real achievement!" (Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University) "Kimberly Theidon's thoughtful ethnography explores the irreducible complexity of civil wars. This is a troubling-indeed, unforgettable-look at violence up close and personal, and one with broad policy implications in settings far beyond Peru. Drawing upon complementary disciplines to present a finely tuned study of violence both structural and intimate, and its legacies in the lives of individuals, families, and communities, Intimate Enemies reminds us that the reverse side of suffering is often resilience; but beyond these is sometimes heard a mortal silence, and the long and debilitating echo of conflicts large and small." (Paul Farmer, Harvard University) "A very important work for the fields of anthropology and human rights. . . . Intimate Enemies is a unique, path-breaking ethnography of community responses to situations of extreme violence, of the clash of armed rebels seeking to overthrow the state and counterinsurgency soldiers." (Kay Warren, Brown University)