Genocide

by Hinton, Alexander Laban; O'neill, Kevin Lewis

• ISBN13: 9780822344056
• ISBN10: 082234405X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-03-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

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 post-genocidal states attempt to produce a more 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, Guatemala, Indonesia, East Timor, Germany, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, and other locales. Specialists on the societies they write about, 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, ranging 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, at worst, such groups are benign. Another examines the consequences of how events, victims, and perpetrators are portrayed by the Rwandan government on the annual day marking that country's 1994 genocide. Still another explores the silence around the deaths of 80,000-100,000 people on Bali during Indonesia's state-sponsored anticommunist violence of 196566, a genocidal period that until only 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 Representationreveals the major contribution that cultural anthropologists can make to the study of genocide.

Author Biography

Alexander Laban Hinton is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, Newark. Kevin Lewis O'Neill is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Genocide, Truth, Memory, and Representation: An Introduction	p. 1
Truth/Memory/Representation
What is an Anthropology of Genocide? Reflections on Field Research with Maya Survivors in Guatemala	p. 29
Perilous Outcomes: International Monitoring and the Perpetuation of Violence in Sudan	p. 54
Whose Genocide? Whose Truth? Representations of Victim and Perpetrator in Rwanda	p. 80
Truth/Memory/Representation
A Politics of Silences: Violence, Memory, and Treacherous Speech in Post-1965 Bali	p. 113
The Limits of Empathy: Emotional Anesthesia and the Museum of Corpses in Post-Holocaust Germany	p. 147
Forgotten Guatemala: Genocide, Truth, and Denial in Guatemala's Oriente	p. 192
Truth/Memory/Representation
Addressing the Legacies of Mass Violence and Genocide in Indonesia and East Timor	p. 219
Mediated Hostility: Media, Affective Citizenship, and Genocide in Northern Nigeria	p. 247
Cleansed of Experience? Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Challenges of Anthropological Representation	p. 279
Epilogue: The Imagination of Genocide	p. 317
Contributors	p. 333
Index	p. 339
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