Genocidal Nightmares Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities

by El-affendi, Abdelwahab

• ISBN13: 9781501320231
• ISBN10: 1501320238
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-07-28
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

This book offers a novel and productive explanation of why 'ordinary' people can be moved to engage in destructive mass violence (or terrorism and the abuse of rights), often in large numbers and in unexpected ways. Its argument is that narratives of insecurity (powerful horror stories people tell and believe about their world and others) can easily make extreme acts appear acceptable, even necessary and heroic. As in action or horror movies, the script dictates how the 'hero' acts. The book provides theoretical justifications for this analysis, building on earlier studies but going beyond them in what amount to a breakthrough in mapping the context of mass violence. It backs its argument with a large number of case studies covering four continents, written by prominent scholars from the relevant countries or with deep knowledge of them. A substantial introduction by the UN's Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide demonstrates the policy relevance of this path-breaking work.

Author Biography

Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Reader in Politics at the University of Westminster, UK. He is the author of Darfur: A Decade in Crisis (2013).

Table of Contents

Preface
Foreword:Dr Francis Deng
Chapter I: Introduction: Narrating the Precariousness of Human Decency
Abdelwahab El-Affendi

Chapter II: Killer Narratives: Collective Nightmares and the Construction of Narrative Communities of Insecurity
Abdelwahab El-Affendi

Chapter III:
Imagining Nationhood, Framing Postcoloniality: Narrativising Nigeria Through the Kinesis Of (Hi)Story
James Tar Tsaaior

Chapter IV:
Sudanese Stories: Narratives of Grievance, Distrust and Fatalism in Recurrent Violence
Alex de Waal

Chapter V:
General Elections and Narratives of Violent Conflict:
The Land Question and Civic Competence in Kenya
Kenneth Inyani Simala

Chapter VI:
The Violence of Security, Lethal Representations, and Hindu Nationalism in India
Dibyesh Anand

Chapter VII:
Memories of Victimhood in Serbia and Croatia from the 1980s to the Disintegration of Yugoslavia
Slobodan G. Markovich

Chapter VIII:
Insecurity, Victimhood, Self and Other: The Case of Israel and Palestine
Ilan Pappe

Chapter IX:
Resistance Narratives: Palestinian Women, Islam and Insecurity
Mari Holt

Chapter X:
State Insecurity and Intergroup Violence: The Case of Modern Iraq
Ali A. Allawi

Chapter XI:
Islamophobia as a Securitisation Narrative: The Exclusionary Logic of Imperial Geopolitics Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Chapter XII:
Killer Narratives in Western Popular Culture
Anas S. Al-Shaikh-Ali

Concluding Remarks
Authors' Biographies