About the Book
What happens to people and the societies in which they live after genocide? How are the devastating events remembered on the individual and collective levels, and how do these memories intersect and diverge as the rulers of postgenocidal states attempt to produce a monolithic “truth” about the past? In this important volume, leading anthropologists consider such questions about the relationship of genocide, truth, memory, and representation in the Balkans, East Timor, Germany, Guatemala, Indonesia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, and other locales.Specialists on the societies about which they write, these anthropologists draw on ethnographic research to provide on-the-ground analyses of communities in the wake of mass brutality. They investigate how mass violence is described or remembered, and how those representations are altered by the attempts of others, from NGOs to governments, to assert “the truth” about outbreaks of violence. One contributor questions the neutrality of an international group monitoring violence in Sudan and the assumption that such groups are, at worst, benign. Another examines the consequences of how events, victims, and perpetrators are portrayed by the Rwandan government during the annual commemoration of that country’s genocide in 1994. Still another explores the silence around the deaths of between eighty and one hundred thousand people on Bali during Indonesia’s state-sponsored anticommunist violence of 1965–1966, a genocidal period that until recently was rarely referenced in tourist guidebooks, anthropological studies on Bali, or even among the Balinese themselves. Other contributors consider issues of political identity and legitimacy, coping, the media, and “ethnic cleansing.” Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation reveals the major contribution that cultural anthropologists can make to the study of genocide.
Contributors. Pamela Ballinger, Jennie E. Burnet, Conerly Casey, Elizabeth Drexler, Leslie Dwyer, Alexander Laban Hinton, Sharon E. Hutchinson, Uli Linke, Kevin Lewis O’Neill, Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Debra Rodman, Victoria Sanford
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments vii
Genocide, Truth, Memory, and Representation: An Introduction / Kevin Lewis O'Neill and Alexander Laban Hinton 1
Part 1. Truth/Memory/Representation
1. What Is an Anthropology of Genocide? Reflections on Field Research with Maya Survivors in Guatemala / Victoria Sanford 29
2. Perverse Outcomes: International Monitoring and the Perpetuation of Violence in Sudan / Sharon E. Hutchinson 54
3. Whose Genocide? Whose Truth? Representations of Victim and Perpetrator in Rwanda / Jennie E. Burnet 80
Part 2. Truth/Memory/Representation
4. A Politics of Silences: Violence, Memory, and Treacherous Speech in Post-1965 Bali / Leslie Dwyer 113
5. The Limits of Empathy: Emotional Anesthesia and the Museum of Corpses in Post-Holocaust Germany / Uli Linke 147
6. Forgotten Guatemala: Genocide, Truth, and Denial in Guatemala's Oriente / Debra Rodman 193
Part 3. Truth/Memory/Representation
7. Addressing the Legacies of Mass Violence and Genocide in Indonesia and East Timor: Truth, Memory, and Corruption / Elizabeth Drexler 219
8. Mediated Hostility: Media, Affective Citizenship, and Genocide in Northern Nigeria / Conerly Casey 247
9. Cleansed of Experience? Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Challenges of Anthropological Representation / Pamela Ballinger 279
Epilogue: The Imagination of Genocide / Antonius C. G. M. Robben 317
Contributors 333
Index 339
About the Author :
Alexander Laban Hinton is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide and editor of Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide.
Kevin Lewis O’Neill is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Review :
"Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation brings the scholarship on genocide to a new level. The editors have assembled a superb group of anthropologists who demonstrate that innovative research and deep, probing questions can also be accompanied by great empathy for victims. Every chapter inspires a rethinking of received categories without ever losing sight of the immense, tragic dimension of genocide."--Eric D. Weitz, author of A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation "This volume brings rich historical and contemporary ethnographic material to bear on the urgent task of writing against violence and terror. The volume benefits greatly from the long-term professional commitments of anthropologists working in settings embroiled in violence and engaging with peoples suffering the ongoing sequelae and cycles of genocidal terror."--Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio and co-editor of Violence in War and Peace
