Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas

277 Pages·2014·2.18 MB·English

by  Daniel Feierstein

Genocide as Social Practice
Genocide, Political Violence, Human Rights Series
Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton, Stephen Eric Bronner,
and Nela Navarro
Alan W. Clarke, Rendition to Torture
Lawrence Davidson, Cultural Genocide
Daniel Feierstein, Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing
Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas
Alexander Laban Hinton, ed., Transitional Justice: Global
Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass
Violence
Alexander Laban Hinton, Thomas La Pointe, and
Douglas Irvin-Erickson, eds., Hidden Genocides: Power,
Knowledge, Memory
Irina Silber, Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Violence,
and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador
Samuel Totten and Rafiki Ubaldo, eds., We Cannot Forget:
Interviews with Survivors of the 1994Genocide in Rwanda
Ronnie Yimsut, Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian
Journey
Genocide as Social Practice
Reorganizing Society under the Nazis
and Argentina’s Military Juntas
DANIEL FEIERSTEIN
Translated by Douglas Andrew Town
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Feierstein, Daniel, 1967–
[Genocidio como práctica social. English]
Genocide as social practice : reorganizing society under the Nazis and Argentinás
military juntas / Daniel Feierstein ; translated Douglas Andrew Town.
pages cm. — (Genocide, political violence, human rights series)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–8135–6318–3(hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–6317–6
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–8135–6319–0(e-book)
1. Genocide. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) 3. Genocide—Argentina.
I. Title.
HV6322.7.F4213 2014
304.6(cid:2)630943—dc23
2013033862
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the
British Library.
First published in Spanish as El genocidio como práctica social: Entre el nazismo y la
experiencia argentina(Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007).
English translation copyright © 2014by Daniel Feierstein
All rights reserved
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CONTENTS
Foreword by
Alexander Laban Hinton vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Bridging the Gap between
Two Genocides 1
PART ONE
Some Theoretical
Questions
1 Defining the Concept of Genocide 11
2 Toward a Typology of Genocidal Social Practices 39
3 Reconciling the Contradictions of Modernity:
Equality, Sovereignty, Autonomy, and
Genocidal Social Practices 52
PART TWO
Historical Foundations:
The Nazi Genocide
4 Discourse and Politics in Holocaust Studies:
Uniqueness, Comparability, and Narration 71
5 The Problem of Explaining the Causes of the
Nazi Genocides 87
6 Reshaping Social Relations through Genocide 104
v
vi CONTENTS
PART THREE
Toward a Historical Basis: Genocidal
Social Practices in Argentina
7 Explaining Genocidal Social Practices in Argentina:
The Problem of Causation 131
8 Toward a Periodization of Genocide in Argentina 161
9 Concentration Camp Logic 186
10 In Conclusion: The Uses of Memory 205
Notes 215
Index 251
FOREWORD
I
n recent years, the field of genocide studies has begun a critical reassessment.
As this process has taken place, concepts and cases, old and new, have come
into dialogue and important conversations and debates have begun. Several of
these discussions emerge in Daniel Feierstein’s Genocide as Social Practice:
Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas, which consti-
tutes a key contribution to this turn in our understanding of genocide.
The title highlights the book’s challenge. Genocide, it tells us, may centrally
involve not just the mass destruction of a group of marginalized “others,” as
conventional understandings hold, but a profound internal reorganization of
society amidst fear and terror. Viewing genocide as a social practice opens up an
entirely different way of understanding such violence, one initially suggested by
Raphael Lemkin, the person who coined the term. Not surprisingly, Professor
Feierstein discusses Lemkin’s work at length, even as he develops his own argu-
ments about the nexus of genocide, power, and social life.
Professor Feierstein’s book offers yet another provocation as it juxtaposes
the Argentinian and Nazi cases. For many people, the destruction of European
Jewry stands as the exemplar of genocide, a notion epitomized, through
metonymy, by industrial mass murder at Auschwitz. Genocide as Social Practice
argues that the 1976–1983violence in Argentina, during which perhaps 20,000
people perished and many more suffered in fear and terror, was a case of
genocide comparable—not in the numbers killed but in the social effects of the
violence—to the Nazi reorganization of Germany and occupied Europe.
Professor Feierstein makes this argument through a detailed comparison of
both cases. In doing so, he suggests that, like Auschwitz and other Nazi death
camps, concentration camps in Argentina may also shed light on the genocidal
process in general, and genocide as a social practice in particular.
His challenge to our understanding of genocide emerges in other ways as
well. Written as a series of trials in Argentina were underway, Genocide as Social
Practiceasks us to take a closer look not just at our commonsense understand-
ings of genocide, but also at the definition given in the 1948 United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
vii
viii FOREWORD
This widely used legal definition specifies that genocide only takes place
when a racial, ethnic, national, or religious group has been targeted for destruc-
tion. Political, economic, social, and other groups were excluded after much
debate at the United Nations because they were said to be “mutable” categories.
As a consequence, the events in Argentina—and other countries in Latin
America and elsewhere—have often been described as political violence or,
sometimes, “politicide.”
Professor Feierstein’s book asks us to reconsider such assumptions.
Drawing inspiration, in part, from Lemkin, he argues in Genocide as Social
Practicethat the notion of “national groups” is much broader than convention-
ally understood and may encompass the destruction of political and other
social groups heretofore excluded from the genocide studies canon. This claim
significantly broadens the purview of genocide and is sure to generate debate.
First published in Spanish in 2007, Genocide as Social Practice has already
had a major impact in parts of Latin America, particularly in Argentina, where
Professor Feierstein is based. His ideas and arguments have informed legal
debates there as lawyers, jurists, and members of civil society have debated
whether or not the events that took place under the military junta can be
considered genocide.
In a landmark decision in 2006 Judge Carlos Rozanski ruled that this
violence constituted genocide—a decision that subsequently found support in
other domestic courts before Judge Rozanski ruled in a second case in 2012that
the violence “unequivocally” qualified as genocide. The debate continues in
Argentina. Now, with the publication of this translation of Genocide as Social
Practice, it will commence in the English-speaking world as well.
While not everyone will agree with all of Professor Feierstein’s arguments,
readers will need to consider them seriously and, in so doing, reexamine their
own preconceptions about genocide. Like the best of books, Genocide as Social
Practicechallenges its readers to engage in such critical thinking.
–Alexander Hinton, Center for the Study of Genocide
and Human Rights, Rutgers University
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I
have the deep conviction that a theoretical book is a collective product. That
is why, when one finishes such a book, somehow a feeling arises that one has
appropriated the ideas, dreams, intuitions and labor of the many people with
whom one has come in contact while writing the book. Perhaps the acknowl-
edgments page is the space in which one tries—who knows if successfully—to
ensure that such appropriation is not transformed into the vile practice of
simple plagiarism.
Many people have collaborated with me in the task of constructing this
text. Therefore, many can share in its merits but not, of course, in its defects,
which are solely the result of my own thoughtlessness or inability to present
ideas and concepts clearly. I must also now thank the many people who have
made possible this newly revised edition, updated and prepared especially for
an English-speaking audience.
I must acknowledge first the help of Guillermo Levy, a friend since adoles-
cence who has thought with me about these issues for more than twenty years,
always trying to be sure that theoretical analysis should inform political prac-
tice. It is difficult to identify in our writings what belongs to whom. We usually
can’t recall our original starting position once our discussions end. It does not
seem that important, after all.
Survivors of the genocides both in Europe and Argentina have a relevant
voice in this book, particularly in chapters 1, 6, 8, and 9. The conversations with
Charles Papiernik—who lived for almost four years in the Auschwitz concentra-
tion camp—lasted through the year 2000. They gave rise to this book and to the
many questions that guided my thinking in writing a large part of what I present
here. Of equal importance are my conversations with Jack Fuchs (survivor of
Auschwitz) and my interview with Marek Edelman (a major leader of the Jewish
resistance in Warsaw). Also, the dialogue with survivors of the Argentinian
repression was a central element in the overall purpose of this book, as were the
interviews carried out as part of research projects that I have led at Tres de
Febrero University (UNTREF) and the University of Buenos Aires. I recall, in par-
ticular, the many conversations, discussions, and coffees shared with Graciela
Daleo and Adriana Calvo, who allowed me to cast original and lucid glances on
ix