Memory and Genocide: On What Remains and the Possibility of Representation PDF
Preview Memory and Genocide: On What Remains and the Possibility of Representation
Memory and Genocide T his book focuses on the ethical, aesthetic, and scholarly dimensions of how genocide-related works of art, documentary films, poetry and performance, muse- ums and monuments, music, dance, image, law, memory narratives, spiritual bonds, and ruins are translated and take place as translations of acts of genocide. It shows how genocide-related modes of representation are acts of translation which displace and produce memory and acts of remembrance of genocidal violence as inheritance of the past in a future present. Thus, the possibility of representa- tion is examined in light of what remains in the aftermath where the past and the future are inseparable companions and we find the idea of the untranslatability in acts of genocide. By opening up both the past and lived experiences of genocidal violence as and through multiple acts of translation, this volume marks a hetero- geneous turn towards the future, and one which will be of interest to all scholars and students of memory and genocide studies, transitional justice, sociology, psychology, and social anthropology. Fazil Moradi has completed his PhD thesis at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Ralph Buchenhorst is currently DAAD Visiting Associated Professor of Phi- losophy at Emory University, Atlanta. He received his PhD from the University of Vienna and his habilitation from the University of Potsdam in Germany. Buchen- horst has been a DAAD Guest Professor at the University of Buenos Aires (2002– 2006) and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2013). Maria Six-Hohenbalken is a Researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, and Lecturer at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. Memory Studies: Global Constellations Series editor : Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA, and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France The ‘past in the present’ has returned in the early twenty-first century with a ven- geance, and with it the expansion of categories of experience. These experiences have largely been lost in the advance of rationalist and constructivist understand- ings of subjectivity and their collective representations. The cultural stakes around forgetting, ‘useful forgetting’ and remembering, locally, regionally, nationally and globally have risen exponentially. It is therefore not unusual that ‘migrant memo- ries’; micro-histories; personal and individual memories in their interwoven rela- tion to cultural, political and social narratives; the mnemonic past and present of emotions, embodiment and ritual; and, finally, the mnemonic spatiality of geogra- phy and territories are receiving more pronounced hearings. T his transpires as the social sciences themselves are consciously globaliz- ing their knowledge bases. In addition to the above, the reconstructive logic of memory in the juggernaut of galloping informationalization is rendering it more and more publicly accessible and therefore part of a new global public constel- lation around the coding of meaning and experience. Memory studies as an aca- demic field of social and cultural inquiry emerges at a time when global public debate – buttressed by the fragmentation of national narratives – has accelerated. Societies today, in late globalized conditions, are pregnant with newly unmediated and unfrozen memories once sequestered in wide collective representations. We welcome manuscripts that examine and analyze these profound cultural traces. Titles in this series : The Slave Ship, Memory and the Origin of Modernity Martyn Hudson War Memory and Commemoration Brad West Transitional Justice and Memory in Cambodia Peter Manning Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era The Ethics of Never Again Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider Memory and Genocide On What Remains and the Possibility of Representation Edited by Fazil Moradi, Ralph Buchenhorst and Maria Six-Hohenbalken First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Fazil Moradi, Ralph Buchenhorst and Maria Six-Hohenbalken; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Fazil Moradi, Ralph Buchenhorst and Maria Six-Hohenbalken 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 A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4724-8201-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-59489-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC To Richard Rottenburg “When the survivors of genocide have passed away, their testimonies have aged, and guilty camps have turned into museums, then this superb collection will help us understand the unending attempts to remember and represent the horrendous violence in performances, narratives, and art works.” Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Utrecht University, Netherlands, author of Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina “This remarkable collection engages with the challenging problem of how human beings cope with genocidal violence, through narratives, performances, visual representations and other modes of translation and remembrance. These richly contextualized case studies go a long way towards reminding us that extreme vio- lence can be an occasion for socially productive forms of narration and recollec- tion which resist the utter despair and speechlessness that accompany genocide.” Arjun Appadurai, New York University, USA Contents List of figures ix Acknowledgments x Notes on contributors xi Preface by Günther Schlee xiv Introduction: the past in translation 1 FAZIL MORADI, MARIA SIX-HOHENBALKEN, RALPH BUCHENHORST 1 Intimate interrogations: the literary grammar of communal violence 10 CHRISTI MERRILL 2 Oral performers and memory of mass violence: dynamics of collective and individual remembering 27 LAURY OCEN 3 Parallel readings: narratives of violence 42 ÉVA KOVÁCS 4 Genocide in translation: on memory, remembrance, and politics of the future 57 FAZIL MORADI 5 Remembering the poison gas attack on Halabja: questions of representations in the emergence of memory on genocide 75 MARIA SIX-HOHENBALKEN 6 Afterlives of genocide: return of human bodies from Berlin to Windhoek, 2011 91 MEMORY BIWA viii Contents 7 Communicating the unthinkable: a psychodynamic perspective 107 IVANA MAČEK 8 Between Nakba, Shoah, and apartheid: notes on a film from the interstices 122 HEIDI GRUNEBAUM 9 The rethinking of remembering: who lays claim to speech in the wake of catastrophe? 138 RACHMI DIYAH LARASATI 10 Field, forum, and vilified art: recent developments in the representation of mass violence and its remembrance 151 RALPH BUCHENHORST Afterword: Wonder Woman, the gutter, and critical genocide studies 165 ALEXANDER LABAN HINTON Index 175 Figures 4.1 “Anfal . . . A Nation’s Identity” 62 4.2 “Halabja . . . A Nation’s Identity” 63 8.1 The Village Under the Forest Film Still 128 8.2 The Village Under the Forest Film Still 132
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