Decapitation, with its unrivalled power to horrify and fascinate, has been a bizarre feature of life across continents and cultures throughout the centuries. From the axe-wielding Tudors at the Tower of London and the guillotines of revolutionary France to the shrunken heads of South America and the headhunters of Indonesia, anthropologist Frances Larson explores the various philosophies behind severed heads through a grisly and compelling historical narrative.
Although headhunting has primarily been viewed by westerners as a savage act of “primitive” cultures, Larson uncovers a global phenomenon, where westerners behaved just as badly. In the mid-19th century, the headhunters became the headhunted as European and American scientists collected skulls to display in museums back home. More recent still, Allied troops in Japan responded to the carnivalesque madness of the the second world war by sending body parts and skulls of their enemies home as gifts or souvenirs.
Larson’s book is published at a particularly poignant time when beheadings as strategic symbols of power are yet again in our midst – but this time the spectacle is set on a global stage, and mediated by the internet. With pertinent first-person accounts from medical students, Tudor diarists, war veterans and Victorian scientists, the book throws up far-reaching moral and philosophical questions: where in the body is personality located (and why do we assume it is the head)? When is the moment of death in decapitation? Is it appropriate to display stolen body parts in museums? If there is an appetite to watch beheadings online, should traditional media outlets follow suit? A former employee of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum (famous for its display of shrunken heads), Larson is a riveting storyteller, and tells a gripping, very human account of an inhumane act.
Severed is published by Granta (RRP £20). Click here to buy it for £16
