The reeducation of a queer theorist Battling cancer, a nice male psychoanalyst and her own sexual demons, the diva of queer theory learned a new way of living. N o one will ever accuse Richard Rhodes of having writer's block. And Athens chose his career, as Rhodes chooses his subjects, in order to make sense of his own childhood violence. His contribution took shape as an idea for a research project. What he found makes singularly depressing reading.
Life is cheap, and evil is banal.
For one thing, he's using case histories instead of huge surveys. We have to take Rhodes' word for their bias. Surely poverty and psychopathology play a role here, though Rhodes specifically denies it. Athens' etiology of violence, even if it doesn't deal in first causes, has profound implications. On a bleaker note, if Athens is right when he says that violentization, once completed, can't be undone, then we really do need more maximum-security prisons.