Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory

Introduction. Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory

1 Is slavery genocide? On one level, a critical genocide studies asks us to consider whether slavery in the United States is a case of hidden genocide. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As we consider such questions, we must challenge our taken-forgranted assumptions and ask why given cases have been ignored, denied, or deliberately hidden. The Turkish campaign of denial of the Armenian genocide provides a vivid example of this issue, involving a long period of forgetting and then, as the Armenian diaspora mobilized, attempting to discredit, divert attention from, and deny the idea that a genocide had taken place. The United States has its own contingent of genocide deniers. A state senator from Colorado was recently quoted as saying that calling the U.S. treatment of American Indians “genocide” would diminish those in other countries “who actually died at the hand of governments.”1 Another, also of Colorado, said legislation recognizing genocide in the United States was disingenuous because “we have not destroyed totally the Native American people.”2 On the same day, this second senator signed legislation recognizing a day of remembrance for the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. One wonders, does she think there are no longer any Armenians or Rwandans alive? Most likely, this lawmaker’s inconsistencies were underscored by her own narrow interest in getting reelected, recognizing and denying genocides while calculating the votes garnered and lost by taking each position. Currently, we see movements afoot to recognize hidden genocides, such as the genocides against the Circassians, Assyrians, native peoples in the Americas and Australia, and formerly colonized peoples from across the world. We are fortunate to have chapters in this volume that consider all of these cases. These movements involve struggles with political regimes whose interests lie Introduction Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory DOUGLAS IRVIN-ERICKSON, THOMAS LA POINTE, AND ALEXANDER LABAN HINTON 2 THE EDITORS in denying genocide, and clashes with social forces dedicated to preserving unproblematic historical narratives that claim a given genocide never occurred. But we should also be asking, to what extent have we as a scholarly community—as people—forgotten genocides not out of purposeful neglect but because of our own traditions, canonizations, and biases? Why, for example, have scholars—including Raphael Lemkin, who invented the concept of genocide— failed to fully consider whether the European and American trade in African slaves was a form of genocide? Why have we often remembered the Rwandan genocide as perpetrated only by Hutus against only Tutsi victims, without considering the executions of moderate Hutus, or the series of genocides before and after, as part of the same historical process? These are difficult questions to ask. But we must ask them if we want our field to continue to grow. Critical Genocide Studies and Hidden Genocides Our volume shares much with René Lemarchand’s recent volume, Forgotten Genocides : Oblivion, Denial, and Memory, and Don Bloxham and Dirk Moses’s Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, though our volume is focused more directly on the aforementioned intersection of power, knowledge, and memory.3 A central theme of Lemarchand’s book is the pattern of denial, silence, myth making, and historical revisionism by which so many genocides become forgotten. From Lemarchand’s volume, it is clear that what is remembered and what is not remembered is a political choice, producing a dominant narrative that reflects the victor’s version of history while silencing dissenting voices. Building on a critical genocide studies approach, this volume seeks to contribute to this conversation by critically examining cases of genocide that have been “hidden” politically, socially, culturally, or historically in accordance with broader systems of political and social power. As such, the contributions to our volume pick up discussions on the various dynamics related to power, knowledge, and memory that have led to certain cases of genocide being denied, diminished, or ignored. The term critical genocide studies appears to have been first used by A. Dirk Moses in his 2006 essay “Toward a Theory of Critical Genocide Studies.”4 Moses draws on critical theory to argue that genocide studies would do well to explore larger global and materialist dynamics—as illustrated by the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and Mark Levene—that are the focus of a “post-liberal” perspective. Central to Moses’s approach is Max Horkheimer’s insistence that theory must be holistic, historical, and able to reflect on its own role in the process of social reproduction. More recently, in his...