Purify and Destroy (eBook)

The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide

Jacques Semelin (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2007
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-51237-4 (ISBN)

Infos

How can we comprehend the sociopolitical processes that give rise to extreme violence, ethnic cleansing, or genocide? A major breakthrough in comparative analysis, Purify and Destroy demonstrates that it is indeed possible to compare the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina while respecting the specificities of each appalling phenomenon. Jacques Semelin achieves this, in part, by leading his readers through the three examples simultaneously, the unraveling of which sometimes converges but most often diverges.Semelin's method is multidisciplinary, relying not only on contemporary history but also on social psychology and political science. Based on the seminal distinction between massacre and genocide, Purify and Destroy identifies the main steps of a general process of destruction, both rational and irrational, born of what Semelin terms "delusional rationality." He describes a dynamic structural model with, at its core, the matrix of a social imaginaire that, responding to fears, resentments, and utopias, carves and recarves the social body by eliminating "the enemy." Semelin identifies the main stages that can lead to a genocidal process and explains how ordinary people can become perpetrators. He develops an intellectual framework to analyze the entire spectrum of mass violence, including terrorism, in the twentieth century and before. Strongly critical of today's political instrumentalization of the "genocide" notion, Semelin urges genocide research to stand back from legal and normative definitions and come of age as a discipline in its own right in the social sciences.

Autor

Jacques Semelin is professor of political science and research director at CERI-CNRS in Paris. After having studied civil resistance within Nazi Europe, he developed comparative genocide research and is now exploring processes of reconciliation and prevention. His previously published book in English is Unarmed Against Hitler: Civil Resistance in Europe, 1939-1943, and he is founder of the Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence.

Inhalt

Foreward by Stanley HoffmannAcknowledgementsintroduction: Understand?I. The Imaginary Constructs of Social DestructivenessUnpromising AvenuesThe power of imaginary constructsFrom the identity narrative to the figure of TraitorFrom the quest for purity to the figure of the Other in excessFrom the security dilemma to the destruction of the enemyII. From Inflammatory Discourse to Sacrificial ViolenceThe intellectual springboardReaching political legitimacyFrom the religious to the sacrificialSocieties torn between adhesion, consent and resistanceIII. International Context, War and the MediaA structure of political opportunitiesSpilling into warTelling the world: a last resort?IV. The Dynamics of Mass MurderThe decision-making process and the deision-makersThe organisation of mass murder and the actors involvedFrom collective indifference to popular participationMorphologies of extreme violenceV. The Vertigo of ImpunityCrossing the threshold into violenceThe tipping mechanismThe dual learning process of massacreThe killers' profiles: revisiting 'the banality of evil'Sexual violence and other atrocitiesVI. The Political Uses of Massacre and GenocideInstrumentalisations of a word that is impossible to define?Distancing genocide studies from the frame of lawDestroying to subjugateDestroying to eradicateDestroying to revoltConclusion: The 'Never Again" RefrainCrisis prevention: arguments and illusionsAn ethics of responsibility'The revenge of passions'AppendicesA. Investigating a massacreB. Comparing massacresBibliographyNotesName IndexSubject Index

Produkt-Details

• Reihe/Serie: The CERI Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies
• Einführung: Stanley Hoffman
• Verlagsort: New York
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• ISBN-10: 0-231-51237-6 / 0231512376
• ISBN-13: 978-0-231-51237-4 / 9780231512374