Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture

by Regina Janes

What is the fascination that decollation holds for us, as individuals and as a culture? Why does the idea make us laugh and the act make us close our eyes? Losing Our Heads explores in both artistic and cultural contexts the role of the chopped-off head. It asks why the practice of decapitation was once so widespread, why it has diminished—but not, as scenes from contemporary Iraq show, completely disappeared—and why we find it so peculiarly repulsive that we use it as a principal marker to separate ourselves from a more “barbaric”or “primitive” past?
Although the topic is grim, Regina Janes’s treatment and conclusions are neither grisly nor gruesome, but continuously instructive about the ironies of humanity’s cultural nature. Bringing to bear an array of evidence, the book argues that the human ability to create meaning from the body motivates the practice of decapitation, its diminution, the impossibility of its extirpation, and its continuing fascination. Ranging from antiquity to the late nineteenth-century passion for Salomé and John the Baptist, and from the enlightenment to postcolonial Africa’s challenge to the severed head as sign of barbarism, Losing Our Heads opens new areas of investigation, enabling readers to understand the shock of decapitation and to see the value in moving past shock to analysis. Written with penetrating wit and featuring striking illustrations, it is sure to captivate anyone interested in his or her head.

Genres: Cultural

255 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

Reviews

[Stephanie McGarrah · Rating 4 out of 5]

don't let the simplicity of the title lead you to believe Losing Our Heads isn't a difficult read. i definitely had a hard time as the book went on. it would help to have at least basic knowledge of some things going in, the french revolution for example. everything i learnt about the french revolution i learned from les miserables, and even that's rocky.

it was a slug for me but not a boring read. reading about heads flying off shouldn't be. regina janes' book is dense, especially for its short length, but not dull.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn’t an easy book to read. The topic of decapitation is particularly gruesome to most decent folks, and I found it unnerving how often this happens in literature. Regina Janes is an English professor, so this follows literary beheadings in the way an academic might. She spends quite a bit of time discussing scaffolds and displaying heads on pikes, mostly focusing on the French Revolution with its infamous guillotine. There’s a lot of interesting information here if you can stomach your way through it.

For me, as a former religion professor, the material on the John the Baptist story was the best. It was quite insightful—so much so that I thought many New Testament scholars would learn a thing or two from reading her analysis. Janes ends the books by taking cues from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and considering beheadings and colonialism. What it means for Black heads to be chopped.

There’s a lot of good analysis here. The book is, however, illustrated. If you’re not interested in seeing disembodied heads this may not be for you. The style is pretty academic in places, but it does offer a lot of insight. If you’d rather just read another summary, feel free to check out my blog post on it: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, or you might just go in search of more cheerful topics.