Is The Holocaust Unique? Perspectives On Comparative Genocide

Is The Holocaust Unique? Perspectives On Comparative Genocide
Author: Alan S. Rosenbaum
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2019-03-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429711174

Evaluating the Jewish Holocaust is by no means a simple matter, and one of the most controversial questions for academics is whether there have been any historical parallels for it. Have Armenians, Gypsies, American Indians, or others undergone a comparable genocide? In this fiercely controversial volume, distinguished scholars offer new discussions of this question. Presenting a wide range of strongly held views, they provide no easy consensus. Some critics contend that if the Holocaust is seen as fundamentally different in kind from other genocides or mass deaths, the suffering of other persecuted groups will be diminished. Others argue that denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust will trivialize it. Alan S. Rosenbaum's introductions provide a much-needed context for readers to come to terms with this multi-dimensional dispute, to help them understand why it has recently intensified, and to enable them to appreciate what universal lessons might be gleaned from studying the Holocaust. This volume makes an important contribution to our comprehension of one of the defining events of modern history. It should be essential reading for scholars, students, and general readers interested in the Holocaust and its relationship to other instances of politically inspired mass murder.

Representing Genocide

Representing Genocide
Author: Rebecca Jinks
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2016-06-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474256953

This book explores the diverse ways in which Holocaust representations have influenced and structured how other genocides are understood and represented in the West. Rebecca Jinks focuses in particular on the canonical 20th century cases of genocide: Armenia, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Using literature, film, photography, and memorialisation, she demonstrates that we can only understand the Holocaust's status as a 'benchmark' for other genocides if we look at the deeper, structural resonances which subtly shape many representations of genocide. Representing Genocide pursues five thematic areas in turn: how genocides are recognised as such by western publics; the representation of the origins and perpetrators of genocide; how western witnesses represent genocide; representations of the aftermath of genocide; and western responses to genocide. Throughout, the book distinguishes between 'mainstream' and other, more nuanced and engaged, representations of genocide. It shows how these mainstream representations – the majority – largely replicate the representational framework of the Holocaust, including the way in which mainstream Holocaust representations resist recognising the rationality, instrumentality and normality of genocide, preferring instead to present it as an aberrant, exceptional event in human society. By contrast, the more engaged representations – often, but not always, originating from those who experienced genocide – tend to revolve around precisely genocide's ordinariness, and the structures and situations common to human society which contribute to and become involved in the violence.

Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide

Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide
Author: Alan S. Rosenbaum
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2020-04-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367157012

This book combines the contentious and often unsavory Tower of Babel of scholars' voices in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. It is essential for scholars, students, and readers interested in the Holocaust and its relationship to other instances of politically inspired mass murder.

The Holocaust and the Armenian Case in Comparative Perspective

The Holocaust and the Armenian Case in Comparative Perspective
Author: Yücel Güçlü
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780761857822

Because the tragedy of the Armenians is not deemed, by consensus, a genocide, many have long sought to connect it to the single event that is most clearly associated with the word genocide-the Holocaust. This book attempts to make this comparison in several distinct ways.

Genocide and International Relations

Genocide and International Relations
Author: Martin Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2013-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107469104

Genocide and International Relations lays the foundations for a new perspective on genocide in the modern world. Genocide studies have been influenced, negatively as well as positively, by the political and cultural context in which the field has developed. In particular, a narrow vision of comparative studies has been influential in which genocide is viewed mainly as a 'domestic' phenomenon of states. This book emphasizes the international context of genocide, seeking to specify more precisely the relationships between genocide and the international system. Shaw aims to re-interpret the classical European context of genocide in this frame, to provide a comprehensive international perspective on Cold War and post-Cold War genocide, and to re-evaluate the key transitions of the end of the Second World War and the end of the Cold War.

Is the Holocaust Unique?

Is the Holocaust Unique?
Author: Alan S Rosenbaum
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2008-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786727454

In essays written specifically for this volume, distinguished contributors assess highly charged and fundamental questions about the Holocaust: Is it unique? How can it be compared with other instances of genocide? What constitutes genocide, and how should the international community respond? On one side of the dispute are those who fear that if the Holocaust is seen as the worst case of genocide ever, its character will diminish the sufferings of other persecuted groups. On the other side are those who argue that unless the Holocaust's uniqueness is established, the inevitable tendency will be to diminish its abiding significance. The editor's introductions provide the contextual considerations for understanding this multidimensional dispute and suggest that there are universal lessons to be learned from studying the Holocaust. The third edition brings this volume up to date and includes new readings on the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, common themes in genocide ideologies, and Iran's reaction to the Holocaust. In a world where genocide persists and the global community continues to struggle with the implications of international crime, prosecution, justice, atonement, reparation, and healing, the issues addressed in this book are as relevant as ever.

Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture

Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture
Author: Claudio Fogu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 528
Release: 2016-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674970519

Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture is a reappraisal of the controversies that have shaped Holocaust studies since the 1980s. Historians, artists, and writers question if and why the Holocaust should remain the ultimate test case for ethics and a unique reference point for how we understand genocide and crimes against humanity.

Genocide as Social Practice

Genocide as Social Practice
Author: Daniel Feierstein
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0813563194

Genocide not only annihilates people but also destroys and reorganizes social relations, using terror as a method. In Genocide as Social Practice, social scientist Daniel Feierstein looks at the policies of state-sponsored repression pursued by the Argentine military dictatorship against political opponents between 1976 and 1983 and those pursued by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945. He finds similarities, not in the extent of the horror but in terms of the goals of the perpetrators. The Nazis resorted to ruthless methods in part to stifle dissent but even more importantly to reorganize German society into a Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community, in which racial solidarity would supposedly replace class struggle. The situation in Argentina echoes this. After seizing power in 1976, the Argentine military described its own program of forced disappearances, torture, and murder as a “process of national reorganization” aimed at remodeling society on “Western and Christian” lines. For Feierstein, genocide can be considered a technology of power—a form of social engineering—that creates, destroys, or reorganizes relationships within a given society. It influences the ways in which different social groups construct their identity and the identity of others, thus shaping the way that groups interrelate. Feierstein establishes continuity between the “reorganizing genocide” first practiced by the Nazis in concentration camps and the more complex version—complex in terms of the symbolic and material closure of social relationships —later applied in Argentina. In conclusion, he speculates on how to construct a political culture capable of confronting and resisting these trends. First published in Argentina, in Spanish, Genocide as Social Practice has since been translated into many languages, now including this English edition. The book provides a distinctive and valuable look at genocide through the lens of Latin America as well as Europe.

Remembrance and Forgiveness

Remembrance and Forgiveness
Author: Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 100020233X

An enquiry into the social science of remembrance and forgiveness in global episodes of genocide and mass violence during the post-Holocaust era, this volume explores the ways in which remembrance and forgiveness have changed over time and how they have been used in more recent cases of genocide and mass violence. With case studies from Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, South Africa, Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Israel, Palestine, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, the United States, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Chechnya, the volume avoids a purely legal perspective to open the interpretation of post-genocidal societies, communities, and individuals to global and interdisciplinary perspectives that consider not only forgiveness and thus social harmony, but remembrance and disharmony. This volume will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in memory studies, genocide, remembrance, and forgiveness.