Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide

239 Pages·2021·13.376 MB·English

by  John Cox, Amal Khoury, Sarah Minslow

Routledge Studies in Modern History
DENIAL: THE FINAL STAGE
OF GENOCIDE
Edited by
John Cox, Amal Khoury, and Sarah Minslow
Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide
Genocide denial not only abuses history and insults the victims but paves the way for future
atrocities. Yet few, if any, books have offered a comparative overview and analysis of this problem.
Denial: the Final Stage of Genocide is a resource for understanding and countering denial.
Denial spans a broad geographic and thematic range in its explorations of varied forms of
denial—which is embedded in each stage of genocide.
Ranging far beyond the most well-known cases of denial, this book offers original,
pathbreaking arguments and contributions regarding:
• competition over commemoration and public memory in Ukraine and elsewhere;
• transitional justice in post-conflict societies;
• global violence against transgender people, which genocide scholars have not adequately
confronted;
• music as a means to recapture history and combat denial;
• public education’s role in erasing Indigenous history and promoting settler-colonial ideology in
the United States;
• “triumphalism” as a new variant of denial following the Bosnian Genocide;
• denial vis-à-vis Rwanda and neighboring Congo (DRC).
With contributions from leading genocide experts as well as emerging scholars, this book will be
of interest to scholars and students of history, genocide studies, anthropology, political science,
international law, gender studies, and human rights.
John Cox directs the Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies at the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. Cox’s latest book is To Kill a People:
Genocide in the Twentieth Century (2017) and he has written and lectured widely on racism,
fascism, genocide, and resistance.
Amal Khoury is Senior Lecturer of Global Studies at The University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, USA. Her research focuses on peacebuilding and post-conflict reconciliation and her
recent publications include “Bridging Elite and Grassroots Initiatives: The Road to Sustainable
Peace in Syria” in Post-Conflict Power-Sharing Agreements: Options For Syria (2018).
Sarah Minslow is an Assistant Professor of English at California State University, Los Angeles,
USA. She specializes in human-rights education, war and genocide in children’s literature, and
refugee narratives. Her recent publications include “Coping with Killing? Child Soldier Narratives
and Traces of Trauma” in Childhood Traumas: Narratives and Representations (2019).
Routledge Studies in Modern History
The Cold War, the Space Race, and the Law of Outer Space
Space for Peace
Albert K. Lai
Experiences of War in Europe and the Americas, 1792–1815
Soldiers, Slaves, and Civilians
Mark Lawrence
The Greek Revolution in the Age of Revolutions (1776–1848)
Reappraisals and Comparisons
Edited by Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Colonising New Zealand
A Reappraisal
Paul Moon
Dictatorship in the Nineteenth Century
Conceptualisations, Experiences, Transfers
Edited by Moisés Prieto
Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide
Edited by John Cox, Amal Khoury and Sarah Minslow
Koreans in Transnational Diasporas of the Russian Far East and Manchuria,
1895–1920
Arirang People
Hye Ok Park
Transatlantic Relations and the Great War
Austria-Hungary and the United States
Kurt Bednar
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
history/series/MODHIST
Denial: The Final Stage of
Genocide
Edited by
John Cox, Amal Khoury,
and Sarah Minslow
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, John Cox, Amal Khoury, and
Sarah Minslow; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of John Cox, Amal Khoury, and Sarah Minslow to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cox, John M., 1963- editor. | Khoury, Amal, editor. |
Minslow, Sarah, 1982- editor.
Title: Denial : the final stage of genocide? / edited by John Cox, Amal
Khoury, and Sarah Minslow.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021012815 | ISBN 9780367818982 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003010708 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Genocide. | Denialism. | Collective memory. |
Transitional justice. | Reconciliation.
Classification: LCC HV6322.7 .D45 2022 | DDC 364.15/1--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012815
ISBN: 978-0-367-81898-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-07296-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01070-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003010708
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
To Dr. Susan Cernyak-Spatz (1922–2019), brilliant scholar,
artist, and educator who survived three years in Theresienstadt
and Auschwitz. She was a pioneer of Holocaust Studies when it
barely existed, laid the foundations for our Center for Holocaust,
Genocide & Human Rights Studies at UNC Charlotte, and
combatted denial, racism, fascism, and bigotry to the end.

Contents
List of figures ix
List of contributors xi
Introduction 1
JOHN COX
1 Is denial the final stage of genocide? Consolidation, the
metaphysics of denial, and the supersession of stage theory 11
HENRY C. THERIAULT
PART I Commemoration and memory cultures in
contemporary societies 27
2 Holodomor and Holocaust memory in competition
and cooperation 29
KIRSTEN DYCK
3 For an anthropological approach to denial: Social
bonds, pathophobia, and the Duvalier regime in Haiti 45
JEAN-PHILIPPE BELLEAU
4 The Soviet denial of murdered Jews’ identity during
and after the Great Patriotic War 62
THOMAS EARL PORTER
5 Commemorating colonial violence from the Dutch
golden age: New Netherland and Coen’s conquest of
the Banda Islands in Dutch memory cultures 78
MARK MEUWESE
viii Contents
PART II State-sanctioned and politicized forms of denial 97
6 Triumphalism: The final stage of the Bosnian genocide 99
HIKMET KARČIĆ
7 The Bosnian genocide and the “Continuum of Denial” 113
SIMON MASSEY
8 Beyond erasure: Indigenous genocide denial and settler
colonialism 131
MICHELLE A. STANLEY
9 Denying Rwanda, denying Congo 148
ADAM JONES
PART III New directions in analyzing and countering denial 161
10 Music as a means to combat genocide denial and assert
Armenian identity 163
MARGARITA TADEVOSYAN
11 The forgotten murders: Gendercide in the twenty-first
century and the destruction of the transgender body 184
HALEY MARIE BROWN
12 Collective historical trauma and retelling the past:
Toward trauma-informed transitional justice praxis 196
JEREMY A. RINKER
Index 215
Figures
2.1 Rohatyn’s 350-year-old Jewish cemetery, one of more than
600 headstone fragments recovered from the city and
returned to the cemetery by Rohatyn Jewish Heritage
since 2010 (Photo credit: Marla Raucher Osborn,
Rohatyn Jewish Heritage, 2018) 34
2.2 Tsarist Eagle with nationalist and national flags, Poltava,
Ukraine (Photo credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D. / Global Photo
Archive / Flickr, May 8, 2019, accessed May 14, 2019,
https://sympathis.flickr.com/photos/adam_jones/
42122503260/in/album-72157669805945017/) 36
3.1 Genealogical tree showing an improbable set of connections
between victims and notorious enforcers of Duvalier, most
notably Frank Romain (Credit: Jean-Philippe Belleau) 51
6.1 Warehouse in Kravica where approximately 1,300 Bosniak
men and boys were killed on July 13, 1994. A quarter century
later, there is no effort to hide the crime or to patch up bullet
holes and other evidence of the crime. Like much of this
region of the so-called Serbian Republic, Kravica once had a
large Bosniak population but is now 90-95 percent Serbian
(Photo credit: John Cox, June 2, 2019) 106
6.2 A few hundred meters from the site of the massacre in Kravica
(Figure 6.1) stands this triumphalist memorial, which is also
discussed in Chapter 7. Built in 2006, it features religious and
nationalist iconography and vastly exaggerates the number of
“Serb martyrs” by including victims of four different wars,
dating back to 1912, in order to have a number that exceeds the
well-known number of 8,372 killed at Srebrenica (Photo credit:
John Cox, June 2, 2019) 107