the historiography of genocide: beyond ‘uniqueness’ and ethnic competition

This article was downloaded by: [University of Toronto Libraries]On: 23 November 2014, At: 16:18Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory andPracticePublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrhi20

The historiography of genocide: beyond ‘uniqueness’and ethnic competitionDan Stone aa Royal Holloway, University of LondonPublished online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Dan Stone (2004) The historiography of genocide: beyond ‘uniqueness’ and ethnic competition,Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 8:1, 127-142, DOI: 10.1080/13642520410001649769

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642520410001649769

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose ofthe Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be reliedupon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shallnot be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and otherliabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrhi20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/13642520410001649769

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642520410001649769

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Rethinking HistoryVol. 8, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 127–142

ISSN 1364-2529 (print)/ISSN 1470-1154 (online) © 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/13642520410001649769

The Historiography of Genocide: Beyond ‘Uniqueness’ and Ethnic Competition

Dan Stone

This article argues that neither the proponents of the uniqueness of the Holo-caust nor those who see other genocides as paradigmatic provide helpful waysof furthering the scholarly understanding of genocide. A new generation ofgenocide scholars is incorporating the findings of earlier research into a synthesisthat promises to respect the extremity of the Holocaust as well as the specificitiesof other genocides, positioning them in a history that sees genocide as a con-tinuum of practices throughout the modern period that must also encompassthe history of racism, colonialism, imperialism and nation-building.

Keywords: Genocide; Holocaust; Uniqueness; Identity; Ethnicity; Generation

We can easily conceive that every fact in the world might be singular,that is, unlike any other fact and sole of its kind. In such a world ofsingulars our logic would be useless, for logic works by predicating ofthe single instance what is true of all its kind. With no two things alikein the world, we should be unable to reason from our past experiencesto our future ones. (James 1995, p. 54)

The future of genocide as a phenomenon looks assured. Since the dayswhen ‘never again!’ was uttered at the end of the Second World War therehave been, according to one estimate, some fifty genocides across the world,mostly of indigenous peoples at the hands of their own states and in thename of ‘development’ (Harff & Gurr 1996; Levene 1999b, p. 23). These‘victims of progress’ (Bodley 1990) make a mockery of the claim that theburgeoning literature on genocide in general, and the truly enormousliterature on the Holocaust in particular, somehow contribute to theprevention of genocide.

RRHI100207.fm Page 127 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 8:35 AM

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

128

D. Stone

This article suggests that the scholarship on the Holocaust has been agreat boost to the study of genocide in general, but that if genocide as aphenomenon is to be understood historically the Holocaust must no longerbe seen as ‘unique’ but as part of a continuum of the history, stronglyevident in, if not defining of modern times, of nation-building on racial,‘ethnic’, political and developmental grounds that has permitted thecommission of the worst atrocities in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘organicpurity’ (Straus 2001a). The appearance of ‘anthropologies of genocide’(Hinton 2002; Stone 2003b), of readers for undergraduates (Lorey &Beezley 2002), and synthetic works that seek to situate the Holocaust intothis framework of race-thinking and nation-building (Weitz 2003; Levene2004) are signs that such a body of historiography is emerging. Thefounding of scholarly journals such as the

Journal of Genocide Research

(1999) and the

Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung

(1999) are further signs ofthis new drive to bring the hard-won, sophisticated historiography of theHolocaust into a less contentious relationship with the scholarship on othergenocides, or at least to provide forums where such issues can be exploredin an atmosphere of mutual trust. Similarly, the appearance of organiza-tions devoted to eradicating genocide, run by international lawyers andhuman rights activists such as Gregory Stanton and William A. Schabas,suggests that there is life beyond scholarly squabbles over the definition ofthe term ‘genocide’.

For many years now the Holocaust has been held to be unique, as somehowstanding apart from other genocides. Sometimes ‘Holocaust’ is consideredto be a separate category altogether from ‘genocide’. This position is held onmetaphysical and (ostensibly) historical grounds. The former is mostfamously represented by Elie Wiesel who writes that ‘Auschwitz cannot beexplained’ because ‘the Holocaust transcends history’ (Wiesel, cited inMagurshak 1988, p. 421). Elsewhere he has written, less mysteriously, that‘The fundamental uniqueness was the plan, the intention of the enemy, toobliterate a whole people down to the last person’ (Semprun & Wiesel 1997,p. 35). Others, such as Nora Levin, make the same argument: ‘Ordinaryhuman beings simply cannot rethink themselves into such a world andordinary ways to achieve empathy fail, for all of the recognizable attributesof human reaction are balked at the Nazi divide. The world of Auschwitzwas, in truth, a new planet’ (Levin 1968, p. xii). The latter position isrepresented by many scholars, mainly though not entirely Jewish, and thecultural mainstream within Jewish communities. The best-known represent-atives of this position are Deborah Lipstadt, Leni Yahil, Lucy Dawidowicz,Eberhard Jäckel, Steven Katz and Yehuda Bauer. Dawidowicz argues baldly


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

129

that ‘The fate of the Jews under National Socialism was unique’ (Dawidowicz1981, p. 11). Lipstadt, placing comparativists in the same camp as deniers,argues that the Nazis’ methods ‘were

sui generis

, and the refusal of thesehistorians to acknowledge that fact reflects the same triumph of ideologyover truth’ as that of deniers (Lipstadt 1994, p. 213). Jäckel, in a now famousquotation, argued in an important intervention into the

Historikerstreit

(Historians’ Debate) of 1986 that ‘the National-Socialist murder of the Jewswas unique because never before had a nation with the authority of its leaderdecided and announced that it would kill off as completely as possible aparticular group of humans, including old people, women, children, andinfants and actually put this decision into practice, using all the means ofgovernmental power at its disposal’ (Jäckel 1993, p. 76).

It is my contention that these ‘historical’ grounds for defending theHolocaust’s uniqueness are in fact ideologically driven attempts to maintainthe Holocaust as a kind of ‘sacred’ entity (Alexander 2002, pp. 27–29).These attempts are undertaken not because of a secret plot by Jewishcommunity leaders, the Anti-Defamation League and Mossad to winsupport for Israel or to extract as much money as possible out of guilt-ridden nations and firms; the ‘Holocaust industry’ thesis (Finkelstein 2000)reveals an enormous failure of the historical imagination in its implicationthat the scholarly and popular interest in so terrible an event stems frommanipulation by shady right-wing communal organizations bent onsuppressing dissent within the Jewish community and making thoseoutside it fearful of being accused of anti-Semitism. Rather, it stems froma historically explicable, but by now harmful belief that Jewish identitywould be massively threatened if one of its mainstays (the fact that all Jewswere potentially victims of Nazism) were to lose its ‘sacred’ aura, and also,unconsciously, a belief that the Holocaust’s status as unique constitutes abulwark against revivified anti-Semitism. It is important to stress then thatwe are talking only of the ‘uniqueness’ thesis in Holocaust Studies, not ofthe study of the Holocaust

per se

.It is interesting to note, for example, that while Steven Katz’s erudition

is remarkable, the fundamental premise of his project—that is, a reason forundertaking it all—is nowhere offered. When Katz claims to have discov-ered the ‘phenomenological’ uniqueness of the Holocaust (Katz 1994,p. 27), it is neither clear philosophically what that means, nor why he seesit necessary again to provide some kind of metaphysical grounding for asupposedly empirical project. After all, if one asks, from a pragmatic pointof view, what difference it makes

to understanding the Holocaust historically

whether the Holocaust is or is not unique, the answer is patently none. Itis hard to escape the conclusion that the affirmation of uniqueness is not a


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

130

D. Stone

historical statement but the creation of a kind of identity-affirming comfortzone: the knowledge that the genocide of one’s own group is ‘beyondhistory’. What is unpalatable is not a ‘Eurocentric’ interest in studying theHolocaust—after all, it is as valid for Europeans (and others) to ponder thecauses and meanings of a European genocide as it is for Rwandans (andothers) to ponder the causes and meanings of an African one; what isunpalatable is the genuinely Eurocentric position that perversely impliesthat ‘our’ genocide was better than yours.

The problem with separating the ‘Holocaust’ from ‘genocide’—quiteapart from internal Jewish community questions about exactly at whatpoint identity formation through focusing on destruction becomes danger-ous rather than fruitful—is that it prevents consensus and solidarity amongvictim groups when it is precisely that solidarity that these groups shouldbe aiming at. To deny ‘uniqueness’ to a particular genocide neither meansrefusing to recognize the horror of the events nor does it mean that thescholarly preoccupation with problems of representation, textuality andmoral limits is irrelevant. Far from it, but the question needs to be asked:In what way are the gas chambers any more unrepresentable than the massbutchering of Tutsis?

1

The fact that the uniqueness hypothesis has less to do with historicalexplanation than with identity politics is clear when one traces the changingcriteria that have been offered in its defence. Every time the hypothesis ischallenged, the criteria are changed. Whether it is numbers, the role oftechnology, the role of the state, or the intention of the perpetrators, all canbe and have been questioned by valid comparisons. How Katz will respondto the events of Rwanda, which are the closest of any genocide since 1945to the Holocaust in terms of the intentions of the perpetrators, is as yetunclear. His definition of genocide—‘the actualisation of the intent,however successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national,ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender, or economic group, as thesegroups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means’ (Katz 1994, p.131)—seems equally applicable to the events of Rwanda. Bauer, when heargues that the Holocaust was unprecedented ‘because of the motivation ofthe murderers’ (Bauer 2001, p. 22), simply avoids dealing with the compar-ison. Although he admits that one can ‘distinguish certain parallels’ (Bauer2001, p. 37), he argues that the Rwandan genocide, unlike the Holocaust,was ‘pragmatic’ (Bauer 2001, pp. 46, 266) as if one could breath again nowthat the threat to the status of the Holocaust has been removed.

Bauer’s use of the term ‘unprecedented’ in his last book signals that thescholarly community is already aware of the awkwardness which ensues onthe use of the term ‘unique’. At the Nuremberg Trials Justice Robert H.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

131

Jackson spoke of the Nazi crimes as ‘unprecedented’ (cited in Yahil 1990,p. 654). Since then, other scholars have offered criteria for using the term‘unprecedented’ in preference to ‘unique’. But in reality the ‘unprecedent-edness’ thesis is only a more sophisticated version of the uniqueness thesis.Bob Brecher, for example, argues that ‘the problems of imputing unique-ness to the Holocaust and the position-staking to which it has led is notonly mystificatory but also actively deflects consideration of the extent towhich what the Nazis did was in fact unprecedented’ (Brecher 1999, p. 17).Brecher is clearly alive to the problems which surround the whole debate,but he concludes in a Katzian fashion that ‘What was visited upon the Jewsand Roma of Europe . . . was unprecedented

in terms of the nature of theNazis’ intentions

’ (Brecher 1999, p. 21).It is true that not all scholars who defend the idea of the Holocaust’s

uniqueness have the same project as Bauer or Katz. Several have come to thisconclusion because of what they see as the peculiarly ‘metaphysical’ qualitiesof the Nazi genocide. Gunnar Heinsohn, for example, who heads theRaphael Lemkin Institute for Xenophobia and Genocide Research inBremen, has written widely on the Holocaust as a fundamental challenge toWestern values. In his latest article he summarizes these findings, claimingthat ‘The Holocaust was “uniquely unique” . . . because it was a genocide forthe purpose of reinstalling the right to genocide’ (Heinsohn 2000, p. 424).In other words, Hitler dreamt of overturning the bedrock of Judaeo-Christian civilization, the prohibition on murder, and ‘returning’ to a virileage—such as characterized the ancient world—where it was accepted thatconquerors would wipe out those whom they vanquished. It was necessaryfor Nazism to target the Jews, therefore, because they were the bearers of thisWestern code of ethics: ‘The German males were entrusted with the weari-some and bloody work of permanently conquering the vast EuropeanLebensraum territories to be emptied of their inhabitants. To perform thesemassive genocides, the Germans were to be relieved of the inhibitory effectcaused by the infection of the Judaic “Thou shalt not kill!” ’ (Heinsohn 2000,p. 426). In a not dissimilar fashion, Stephen Bronner, in an important articlewhich highlights the value of different interpretive approaches to the Holo-caust, concludes that its uniqueness lies in the fact that the Nazi plan wasnot to stop with the Jews but was to go on to reshape the demography ofEurope through the genocide of Gypsies, Slavs and other victims. ForBronner, this grand scale separates the Holocaust from other genocides: ‘Noother regime has ever employed genocide in order to empty the world andbegin it anew. The Nazi project was subsequently more grandiose than othermore traditional forms of genocide. . . . Never before or since has genocidebeen launched against humanity itself. The Holocaust is made unique by its


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

132

D. Stone

genocidal dynamic’ (Bronner 1999, p. 323). Now it is quite clear that neitherHeinsohn nor Bronner represents a ‘Jewish exclusivist’ position, yet both putforward intriguing and compelling grounds for the uniqueness of the Holo-caust (it is important to note that Bronner does not restrict the definition ofthe Holocaust to the Jews alone). However, both must surely be aware of theproblems involved in using the term ‘unique’ (see Rosenfeld 1999); theybecome involved in disputes that are other than scholarly by doing so.Furthermore, it is also certain that Ward Churchill, for example, would findgrounds on which their claims could be disputed. The demographic reshap-ing of the Americas could also be seen as an ontological attempt to refashionhumanity. Thus, while we must recognize different categories of ‘uniquists’,the problems which arise by virtue of defending that thesis are similar: theyoverlook the fact that other genocides have more in common with theHolocaust than they do differences.

Irrespective of whether one talks of ‘uniqueness’ or ‘unprecedentedness’,the effect is the same. Following the logic of uniqueness to its conclusionbrings even more confusion: either the Holocaust, since nothing can becompared to it, is irrelevant to understanding history (Stone 2004) or, if theHolocaust is defined as a ‘total destruction’ (Bauer 2001, p. 10), then ‘theHolocaust’ cannot be seen as ‘a Holocaust’ because the genocide of the Jews,though it did destroy Jewish civilization in Central and Eastern Europe, didnot succeed in killing all the Jews. Bauer’s argument that ‘Total physicalannihilation . . . is what happened to the Jews’ (Bauer 1991, p. 40) is simplyincorrect. This is what Jeffrey Alexander calls ‘the dilemma of uniqueness’(Alexander 2002, pp. 51–52). These kinds of argument, as is clear from eventhis brief summary, are distasteful and degrading, both to those whopartake in them and to the memory of the victims.

No wonder some have resorted to polemical arguments in opposition to‘uniqueness’. To take a few typical statements: Vinay Lal argues that ‘Fromthe standpoint of numerous Asian and Third World scholars, the Holo-caust, alongside the killings of homosexuals, gypsies, and the purportedlyderanged, visited upon the peoples of Europe the violence that colonialpowers had routinely inflicted on the “natives” all over the world for nearlyfive hundred years’ (Lal 1998, p. 1188). Three decades earlier the great poetand scholar Aimé Césaire fulminated against the way in which the genocideof the Jews had been set apart from genocides committed against non-Western peoples with a searing attack on Western values:

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps takenby Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, veryhumanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century thatwithout his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

133

inhabits him

, that Hitler is his

demon

, that if he rails against him, he isbeing inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler foris not

crime

in itself,

the crime against man

, it is

not the humiliation of manas such

, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the whiteman, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures whichuntil then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, thecoolies of India, and the blacks of Africa. (Césaire 1972, p. 14)

Or, as Alphonso Lingis writes, passionately as well as impressionistically,‘One’s silence tortures them: AIDS victims identified by established meansof research as homosexuals and drug addicts cast out into the streets,Africans not heard by jetliners roaring overhead without dropping tons ofthe surplus grains heaped up in American granaries, Quecha peasantsdelivered over to military operations programmed in Pentagon computers,forty thousand children dying each day in the fetid slums of Third Worldcities, an Auschwitz every three months’ (Lingis 1994, p. 36).

2

These aregeneral statements about the West’s genocidal history and ongoing poten-tial that should make proponents of the uniqueness of the Holocaust sit upand take notice of the implicit and paradoxical Eurocentrism whichdemands that the Holocaust stand apart from other genocides because itwas committed ‘in the heart of civilized Europe’ rather than in the midst of(supposedly) primitive or barbaric societies. Indeed, quite apart fromfailing to take seriously genocides which have occurred elsewhere in theworld, such critiques suggest that a large gap in Western consciousnessconcerning the histories of the founding of modern settler states—theUnited States, Canada, Australia, South Africa—urgently needs to beaddressed.

3

However, many other scholars have objected to the uniqueness thesis onthe grounds that it overlooks the injury done to people other than the Jews.These scholars single out their own preferred genocide and attempt to putit forward as the ‘worst’, as unique, thereby displacing the Holocaust andinstating another genocide in its place. Excellent examples of this overturn-ing procedure are provided by Ward Churchill and David Stannard in theirfight for the recognition of the genocide perpetrated against native Ameri-cans. In itself this is a vital task, since the indifference with which modernAmericans have generally regarded the history of their own country’sfounding is more than disturbing. Katz’s claim that ‘the greatest demo-graphic disaster in history, the depopulation of the New World, for all itsterror and death, was largely an unintended tragedy, a tragedy that occurreddespite the sincere and indisputable desire of the Europeans to keep theIndian population alive’ (Katz 1994, p. 20) reveals, at the least, a lack ofempathy. But in the process of arguing their case, these scholars, perhaps


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

134

D. Stone

angered by the difficulty of getting their voices heard, have objected to theclaim of the uniqueness of the Holocaust only to install the genocide ofnative Americans in that position. Churchill, for example, writes that ‘TheAmerican holocaust was and remains unparalleled, both in terms of itsmagnitude and the degree to which its goals were met, and in terms of theextent to which its ferocity was sustained over time by not one but severalparticipating groups’ (Churchill 1997, p. 4). He devotes two essays topointing out the similarities between the strategies employed by Holocaustdeniers and advocates of what he calls ‘Jewish exclusivism’ (Churchill 1997,pp. 19–80). Indeed, he claims that ‘the project of Holocaust deniers is farless ambitious and, to that extent at least, quantitatively less demonstrativeof sheer sophistry than that of Holocaust exclusivists like Lipstadt andSteven Katz’ (Churchill 1997, p. 73). Of the genocide of native AmericansStannard notes that ‘Of all the horrific genocides that have occurred in thetwentieth century against Armenians, Jews, Gypsies, Ibos, Bengalis, Timor-ese, Kampucheans, Ugandans, and more, none has come close to destroyingthis many—or this great a proportion—of wholly innocent people’ (Stan-nard 1992, p. 75). And in his attack on proponents of uniqueness, primarilyKatz, Stannard goes so far as to accuse them not only of complicity ingenocide denial, but in genocide itself: ‘when advocates of the allegedlyunique suffering of Jews during the Holocaust

themselves

participate indenial of

other

historical genocides—

and such denial is inextricably interwo-ven with the very claim of uniqueness

—they thereby actively participate inmaking it much easier for those other genocides to be repeated’ (Stannard1996, p. 197).

Neither approach is any longer tenable. If genocide is going to be under-stood historically, its scholars must cease partaking in this kind of compe-tition for ethnic suffering, this search for the sacred event (Ophir 1987) thatmarks out one community as more worthy of attention and respect thanothers. Fortunately, the signs are not wanting that a new generation ofgenocide scholars is emerging who adhere to notions of disinterestedscholarship not as a means of domesticating genocide or incorporating itinto historicist schemes of progress and redemption, but with the aim ofproviding a taxonomy of genocide that will promote solidarity among itsvictims and critical positioning when genocide appears in the contempo-rary world. There have been too many studies that show how politiciansand scholars avoid using the term ‘genocide’ for fear of triggering expensiveintervention or because the events under scrutiny do not conform tothe

‘paradigm’ case of the Holocaust (Alexander 2002; Cushman &Mestrovic 1996; Melvern 2000; Power 2002). Genocide scholars now feel itincumbent upon themselves to break away from this vicious circle, and


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

135

provide a historical framework for understanding genocide that situates itinto the broader developments of world history and human behaviour, butwithout losing sight of the perpetrators. One can debate definitions end-lessly, but the problem is surely to understand the conditions for andcombat the occurrence of mass violence.

This new cohort of genocide scholars is challenging the existing stalematein the historiography. Their emergence marks a generational change, sincethey refuse the solace of the identity-affirming ‘comfort’ that comes withestablishing the genocide of one’s own ethnic group as somehow ‘sacred’ or‘beyond history’. Rather they seek to understand genocide in historicalcontext without either eliminating the differences between them or collaps-ing the phenomenon into a unitary and undifferentiated form of societalcrisis.

Three different approaches—all of them overlapping—may be identifiedthat seek this new synthesis in understanding genocide: ‘world historical’,‘nation-building’, and ‘anthropological’.

The first two approaches—‘world historical’ and ‘nation-building’—arevariants on a theme, and see genocide as a fundamental characteristic ofworld history. They attempt to provide both a sociological typology ofgenocide (Dabag 1999; Moshman 2001; Scherrer 1999; Straus 2001b) andto provide a broad historical framework for this typology, making of itmore than just an ideal type. Charles Maier’s attempt to see the history ofthe twentieth century as a struggle over territory, while it does not deal withgenocide

per se

, would be one way of seeing the relevance of genocide tosuch a narrative (Maier 2000). In terms of nation-building, a good exampleis the work of Donald Bloxham on Armenia. Reproaching the mainstreamhistoriography for trying to see the genocide of the Armenians in the lightof a Holocaust paradigm, Bloxham places the acts of the Ottoman Empirein a relation with the global politics of the day: the conflict between theEuropean and American great powers, and the history of Christian–Muslimrelations within the Ottoman world (Bloxham 2002). What Bloxham’s workshows is that the traditional nation-state framework is insufficient forunderstanding the evolution of genocide. Even in the case of a genocide likethat of Rwanda, which appears to be confined to one state, this approachdoes not deal adequately with the facts. First, the international community(especially the UN, the US and France) has been severely criticized both forfailing to prevent genocide from breaking out and for failing to interveneonce it started (Adelman 2000; Des Forges 1999; Melvern 2000; Power2002). Second, the war—and potential genocide—in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo (Zaire) that ensued, engulfing the whole region inwarfare, can be understood only in the light of the Rwandan genocide, since


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

136

D. Stone

the

génocidaires

fled westwards, and the Rwandan army followed them. Thisapproach does not diminish the suffering of the victims; it does removethem from the realm of the ‘sacred’ and seek to explain how states arrive atgenocide as a viable option.

The ‘world-historical’ approach is basically similar to the ‘nation-build-ing’ approach, except that it places more stress on structural or globaleconomic factors. The development of the state system, while it has to someextent been able to protect minority rights through treaty agreements, hasmore often than not been a dynamic for homogenization and the elimina-tion of difference. The scholar who argues most insistently that genocide isan outcome of the drive for nation-building in the context of the globalizedmarket is Mark Levene, who has not only provided numerous historicalcase studies of this explanation, but who also shows how the same processcontributes to the perpetuation of genocide today (e.g. Levene 1999a,1999b). He claims, controversially, that ‘the origins of something which wespecifically call genocide, followed by the persistence and prevalence of thisphenomenon into the contemporary world, is intrinsically bound up withthat emerging system and is indeed

an intrinsic and crucial part

of it’(Levene 2000b, p. 308). His new book on this topic provides a benchmarkfor all scholars in the field, since it moves beyond the early attempts atcomparative study to put forward an interpretation of how and why thetwentieth century was ‘the century of genocide’ (Levene 2000b, 2004). ‘Thegenocidal mentality’, argues Levene, ‘is closely linked with agendas aimedat accelerated or force-paced social and economic change in the interests of“catching up” or alternatively avoiding, or circumventing, the rules of thesystem leaders’ (Levene 2000b, p. 319). Hence the emergence of genocide,and hence its continued existence, even prevalence, in the post-Holocaustworld of global competition. Hence too the danger of thinking in terms of‘minority rights’, since this presupposes the predominance of the nation-state, which will always trample on such ‘rights’ when its self-perceivedinterests require it to do so (Levene 2000a). The nation-state system itselfcreates the conditions under which genocide becomes a viable option:‘Genocide

is

the mainstream, not simply because of the way it very tangiblyoperates through the sale of western arms to Third World genocidal prac-titioners, but rather in the degree to which it is a by-product of our currentglobal political economy’ (Levene 1999b, p. 24).

4

Dirk Moses’ forthcoming work promises an interpretation that seesgenocide as the outcome of the ‘racial century’; that is, the years

c.

1850 to1950. That hundred years’ ‘most basic feature was competition betweenrival projects of nation-building and “people-making” (that is, the fashion-ing of ethnically homogeneous populations domestically) that culminated


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

137

in the Holocaust of European Jewry and other racial minorities in the1940s’ (Moses 2002, pp. 33–34). In other words, European history is hereconceptualized as a dynamic process, in which the history of imperialismis seen as integral to understanding the era of fascism. In this, Moses takeshis cue from Arendt’s

Origins of Totalitarianism

(1951), a book whose thesisof the continuity from imperialism to fascism has still not received thecritical attention it deserves. Here and in Levene’s work it is taken forgranted that the Holocaust needs to be studied in the context of racism,nationalism, colonialism and imperialism if genocide is to be a meaningfultool of historical understanding.

5

The ‘anthropological’ approach fundamentally shares the presupposi-tions of these two ‘systemic’ approaches. It does not necessarily imply anabsence of a sociopolitical framework for understanding, nor does itsuggest (though it could do so) that genocide is the automatic response ofa species that is ‘hard-wired’ for aggression and violence. Rather, it seeks tofind sociological explanations for the apparently contingent occurrence ofmass violence, negotiating between ‘human nature’ and ‘social structure’.

6

One excellent example is Christopher Taylor’s analysis of Rwanda. Taylor,who years before the 1994 genocide had done fieldwork on Rwandannotions of medicine, explains the extraordinarily ferocious sexual aspectsof the genocide as outcomes of popular Rwandan beliefs in ‘blockages’ and‘flows’: the Tutsis were, from the Hutu Power point of view, a ‘blockage’preventing the realization of a stable society. The vicious impalings, breastoblations and rapes that characterized the murders are understood byTaylor as representing, in the most gruesome way, the ‘unblocking’ of‘natural’ flows (Taylor 1999). Another is Alexander Hinton’s treatment ofrevenge in the Cambodian genocide. Hinton provides an explanation forthe Cambodian genocide in terms of long-established notions of ‘dispro-portionate revenge’ (‘a head for an eye’) in Cambodian culture. Even as heputs forward this explanation, Hinton is careful to note that Cambodianshave other ways of dealing with anger and insult than murder, but that inthis case the ‘disproportionate revenge’ theory can clearly be seen in action(Hinton 2002).

This approach does not contradict Levene’s findings about the place ofgenocide in the global system; it seeks simply to add a human dimensionto that systemic framework, thus explaining the sociocultural dynamicsthat prevail in any given genocidal circumstance. As Hinton notes, ‘Humanbehaviour is both enabled and constrained by sociocultural structures. . . .Within an appropriate historical and sociocultural context, those whoarticulate genocidal ideologies often use these highly salient cultural modelsto motivate individuals to commit violent atrocities’ (Hinton 2002,


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

138

D. Stone

pp. 255–256). Anthropologists can contribute to our understanding ofgenocide not by putting forward sociobiological or evolutionary psycho-logical explanations about our species’ (or the male of the species’) innateaggression, but by pointing out ‘how cultural models come to serve astemplates for violence, since such implicit cultural knowledge oftenprovides fodder for genocidal ideologies’ (Hinton 2002, p. 275).

The future of genocide studies currently looks promising; we are witnessingan important transition in the historiography, as a reorientation is occur-ring that will fulfil the dream of earlier scholars (Chalk & Jonassohn 1990;Charny 1988; Elliot 1972; Fein 1979; Kuper 1981; Lemkin 1944) of under-taking genuine comparative genocide studies without resorting to hier-archies of victimization or competition for ethnic validation throughsuffering, and of understanding genocide through a meaningful historicalframework that provides clarity when approaching the perpetuation of thephenomenon today.

To what extent may this transition be seen as a generational issue? Is itthe case that historians are no longer scarred by ethnic suffering? Twentyyears ago, Jacob Katz wrote that the Holocaust was ‘an absolute

novum

lacking accountability in any rational terms at the disposal of the generationthat experienced it’. But he acknowledged the possibility that this might notbe the case forever: ‘It remains to be seen whether subsequent generationswill be more successful in evolving some line of thought adequate to dealwith what, for the generation that lived through it, can only be character-ized as a trauma, a wounding experience beyond the reach of intellectualconceptualization’ (Katz 1981, p. 33). Those who do not respect this traumaand who condemn the defenders of the uniqueness thesis as exclusivistJewish zealots, fail to understand the break in experience that the Holocaustrepresented. Yet it is striking that it has been the literature on traumagenerated by the Holocaust that has alerted scholars, sensitizing them to thereality of post-1945 genocide. The new generation of scholars of the Holo-caust has begun to recognize that a similar break in experience was under-gone by other groups that have suffered the horrors of genocide: such eventscan be no more incorporated into established narratives and paradigms ofRwandan or Cambodian history than they can be into Jewish or Germanhistory. The developing intellectual conceptualization of the Holocaust isone which respects the horror that the victims witnessed, understands thespecificities of modern German and Jewish history, yet also sees that under-standing genocide requires a broader outlook. In this approach, the absenceof a conflict dynamic between perpetrator and victim (German and Jew/Roma) might make the Holocaust an extreme example of a widely

RRHI100207.fm 8 Wednesday, March 3, 2004 8:35 AM

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

139

recognized phenomenon, but will not place it in a category all of its own.Only this broader history of genocide, now being forged, may take usbeyond uniqueness and ethnic competition, and engender the kind ofvictim-centred solidarity that should be the ambition of all those who workin this field.

Notes

[1] On the similarities and differences between the Holocaust and Rwanda cf. Levene1999c; Lemarchand 2002.

[2] Cf. Lingis 1997.[3] For example, Barta 2000; Bodley 1990; Churchill 1997; Davis 2001; Moses 2000,

2001; Palmer 2000; Stannard 1992; Totten

et al.

2002.[4] Cf. Dietrich 1981, p. 458: ‘genocide is a fundamental mechanism for the unifica-

tion of the national state.’[5] For a greater stress on race see Weitz 2003.[6] For example, Lobont, 2000; Stone 2001, 2004.

References

Adelman, H. (2000) ‘Rwanda revisited: in search for lessons’,

Journal of GenocideResearch

, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 431–444.Alexander, J. T. (2002) ‘On the social construction of moral universals: the “Holocaust”

from war crime to trauma drama’,

European Journal of Social Theory

, vol. 5, no.1, pp. 5–85.

Arendt, H. (1979 [1951])

The Origins of Totalitarianism

, Harcourt Brace & Company,San Diego.

Barta, T. (2000) ‘Relations of genocide: land and lives in the colonization of Australia’in

Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death

(2ndedn), ed. I. Wallimann & M. N. Dobkowski, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.

Bauer, Y. (1991) ‘Holocaust and Genocide: Some Comparisons’ in

Lessons and Legacies:The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World

, ed. P. Hayes, NorthwesternUniversity Press, Evanston.

Bauer, Y. (2001)

Rethinking the Holocaust

, Yale University Press, New Haven.Bloxham, D. (2002) ‘Three imperialisms and a Turkish nationalism: international

stresses, imperial disintegration and the Armenian genocide’,

Patterns of Preju-dice

, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 37–58.Bodley, J. H. (1990)

Victims of Progress

(3rd edn), Mayfield Publishing Company,Mountain View, CA.

Brecher, B. (1999) ‘Understanding the Holocaust: the uniqueness debate’,

RadicalPhilosophy

, vol. 96, pp. 17–28.Bronner, S. E. (1999) ‘Making sense of hell: three meditations on the Holocaust’,

PoliticalStudies

, vol. 47, no. 2, pp. 314–328.Césaire, A. (1972)

Discourse on Colonialism

, Monthly Review Press, New York.Chalk, F. & Jonassohn, K. (eds) (1990)

The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analysesand Case Studies

, Yale University Press, New Haven.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

140

D. Stone

Charny, I. (1988)

Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review

, Mansell, London.Churchill, W. (1997)

A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas1492 to the Present

, City Lights Books, San Francisco.Cushman, T. & Mestrovic, S. G. (eds) (1996)

This Time We Knew: Western Responses toGenocide in Bosnia

, NYU Press, New York.Dabag, M. (1999) ‘Genozidforschung. Leitfragen, Kontroversen, Überlieferungen’,

Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung

, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 6–35.Davis, M. (2001)

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the ThirdWorld

, Verso, London.Dawidowicz, L. S. (1981)

The Holocaust and the Historians

, Harvard University Press,Cambridge, MA.

Des Forges, A. (1999)

Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda

, Human RightsWatch, New York.

Dietrich, D. J. (1981) ‘Holocaust as public policy: the Third Reich’,

Human Relations

,vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 1–25.

Elliot, G. (1972)

Twentieth Century Book of the Dead

, Allen Lane/The Penguin Press,London.

Fein, H. (1979)

Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimizationduring the Holocaust

, The Free Press, New York.Finkelstein, N. G. (2000)

The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of JewishSuffering

, Verso, London.Harff, B. & Gurr, T. R. (1996) ‘Victims of the state: genocides, politicides, and group

repression from 1945 to 1995’ in

Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Conse-quences

, ed. A. J. Jongman, Pioom, The Hague.Hayden, R. M. (1996) ‘Schindler’s fate: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and population

transfers’,

Slavic Review

, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 727–748.Heinsohn, G. (2000) ‘What makes the Holocaust a uniquely unique genocide?’,

Journalof Genocide Research

, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 411–430.Hinton, A. L. (2002a) ‘A head for an eye: revenge in the Cambodian genocide’ in

Genocide: An Anthropological Reader

, ed. A. L. Hinton, Blackwell, Oxford.Hinton, A. L. (ed.) (2002b)

Genocide: An Anthropological Reader

, Blackwell, Oxford.Jäckel, E. (1993) ‘The impoverished practice of insinuation: the singular aspect of

national-socialist crimes cannot be denied’ in

Forever in the Shadow of Hitler?Original Documents of the Historikerstreit, the Controversy Concerning the Singu-larity of the Holocaust

, ed. J. Knowlton & T. Cates, Humanities Press, AtlanticHighlands, NJ.

James, W. (1995 [1907])

Pragmatism

, Dover Publications, New York.Katz, J. (1981) ‘Was the Holocaust predictable?’ in

The Holocaust as Historical Experience

,ed. Y. Bauer & N. Rotenstreich, Holmes & Meier, New York.

Katz, S. T. (1994)

The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1: The Holocaust and MassDeath before the Modern Age

, Oxford University Press, Oxford.Kuper, L. (1981)

Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century

, Penguin, Har-mondsworth.

Lal, V. (1998) ‘Genocide, barbaric others, and the violence of categories: a response toOmer Bartov’,

American Historical Review

, vol. 103, pp. 1187–1190.Lemarchand, R. (2002) ‘Disconnecting the threads: Rwanda and the Holocaust recon-

sidered’,


, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 499–518.Lemkin, R. (1944)

Axis Rule in Occupied Europe

, Carnegie Endowment, Washington, DC.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

Rethinking History

141

Levene, M. (1999a) ‘The Chittagong Hill Tracts: a case study in the political economyof “creeping” genocide’,

Third World Quarterly

, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 339–369.Levene, M. (1999b) ‘A moving target, the usual suspects and (maybe) a smoking gun:

the problem of pinning blame in modern genocide’,

Patterns of Prejudice

, vol. 33,no. 4, pp. 3–24.

Levene, M. (1999c) ‘Connecting threads: Rwanda, the Holocaust and the pattern ofcontemporary genocide’ in

Genocide: Essays Toward Understanding, Early-Warning, and Prevention

, ed. R. W. Smith, Association of Genocide Scholars,Williamsburg.

Levene, M. (2000a) ‘The limits of tolerance: nation-state building and what it means forminority groups’,

Patterns of Prejudice

, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 19–40.Levene, M. (2000b) ‘Why is the twentieth century the century of genocide?’,

Journal ofWorld History

, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 305–336.Levene, M. (2004)

Genocide in the Modern Age, Vol. 1: The Coming of Genocide

, I. B.Tauris, London.

Levin, N. (1968)

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945

, ThomasY. Crowell Company, New York.

Lingis, A. (1994)

Abuses

, University of California Press, Berkeley.Lingis, A. (1997) ‘Anger’ in

On Jean-Luc Nancy: The Sense of Philosophy

, ed. D. Sheppard,S. Sparks & C. Thomas, Routledge, London.

Lipstadt, D. E. (1994)

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Memory and Truth

,Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Lobont,, F. (2000) ‘From re-enactment of emotions to psychohistory: a Collingwoodianapproach to the Holocaust’,

Revista de psihologie aplicata

(Timis,oara), vol. 2, no.2, pp. 79–108.

Lorey, D. E., & Beezley, W. H. (eds) (2002)

Genocide, Collective Violence, and PopularMemory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century

, ScholarlyResources, Wilmington.

Magurshak, D. (1988) ‘The “incomprehensibility” of the Holocaust: tightening up someloose usage’ in

Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a DarkTime

, ed. A. Rosenberg & G. E. Myers, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.Maier, C. S. (2000) ‘Consigning the twentieth century to history: alternative narratives

for the modern era’,

American Historical Review

, vol. 105, no. 3, pp. 807–831.Melvern, L. R. (2000)

A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide

, ZedBooks, London.

Moses, A. Dirk (2000) ‘An Antipodean genocide? The origins of the genocidal momentin the colonization of Australia’,


, vol. 2, no. 1,pp. 89–106.

Moses, A. Dirk (2001) ‘Coming to terms with genocidal pasts in comparative perspec-tive: Germany and Australia’,

Aboriginal History

, vol. 25, pp. 91–115.Moses, A. Dirk (2002) ‘Conceptual blockages and definitional dilemmas in the “racial

century”: genocides of indigenous peoples and the Holocaust’,

Patterns of Preju-dice

, vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 3–36.Moshman, D. (2001) ‘Conceptual constraints on thinking about genocide’,

Journal ofGenocide Research

, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 431–450.Ophir, A. (1987) ‘On sanctifying the Holocaust: an anti-theological treatise’,

Tikkun

, vol.2, no. 1, pp. 61–67.

Palmer, A. (2000)

Colonial Genocide

, Crawford House Publishing, Adelaide.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014

142

D. Stone

Power, S. (2002)

‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide

, Basic Books,New York.

Rosenfeld, G. D. (1999) ‘The politics of uniqueness: reflections on the recent polemicalturn in Holocaust and genocide scholarship’,

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

, vol.13, no. 1, pp. 28–61.

Scherrer, C. P. (1999) ‘Towards a theory of modern genocide. Comparative genocideresearch: definitions, criteria, typologies, cases, key elements, patterns and voids’,


, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 13–24.Sémelin, J. (ed.) (2002) ‘Extreme violence’, special issue of

International Social ScienceJournal

, vol. 174.Semprun, J. & Wiesel, E. (1997)

Schweigen ist unmöglich

, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurtam Main.

Stannard, D. (1992)

American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World

, Oxford Uni-versity Press, New York.

Stannard, D. (1996) ‘Uniqueness as denial: the politics of genocide scholarship’ in Is theHolocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, ed. A. S. Rosenbaum,Westview Press, Boulder, CO.

Stone, D. (1999a) ‘Modernity and violence: theoretical reflections on the Einsatz-gruppen’, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 367–378.

Stone, D. (1999b) ‘Ontology or bureaucracy? Hannah Arendt’s early interpretation ofthe Holocaust’, European Judaism, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 11–25.

Stone, D. (2001) ‘Georges Bataille and the interpretation of the Holocaust’ in TheoreticalInterpretations of the Holocaust, ed. D. Stone, Rodopi, Amsterdam.

Stone, D. (2003) Constructing the Holocaust: A Study in Historiography, Vallentine Mitch-ell, London.

Stone, D. (2004) ‘Genocide as transgression’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 7,no. 1, pp. 45–65.

Straus, S. (2001a) ‘Organic purity and the role of anthropology in Cambodia andRwanda’, Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 47–62.

Straus, S. (2001b) ‘Contested meanings and conflicting imperatives: a conceptualanalysis of genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 349–375.

Taylor, C. C. (1999) Sacrifice as Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994, Berg, Oxford.Totten, S., Parsons, W. S. & Hitchcock, R K. (2002) ‘Confronting genocide and ethnocide

of indigenous peoples: an interdisciplinary approach to definition, intervention,prevention, and advocacy’ in Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Geno-cide, ed. A. L. Hinton, University of California Press, Berkeley.

Weitz, E. D. (2003) A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation, PrincetonUniversity Press, Princeton, NJ.

Yahil, L. (1990) The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945, OxfordUniversity Press, New York.


Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f T

oron

to L

ibra

ries

] at

16:

18 2

3 N

ovem

ber

2014