Human Rights and Memory

Notes

notes chapter 1 1. By “human rights regime” we mean a system of rule that goes beyond national rule and includes declarations as well as instruments (see Donnelly 1986 for an early use of this term). All translations are our own unless otherwise indicated. 2. “International regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules and decisionmaking procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area” (Krasner 1982, 185). 3. For a view that considers cosmopolitanism as the opposite of patriotism, see Nussbaum 2002. 4. The central drawback of collapsing universalism and cosmopolitanism is not merely that it entails a Eurocentric bias, but it also operates with an ahistorical frame of reference that seeks to shape and freeze particular memories of the past into universal standards for the future. Here we face the danger of reifying a phenomenon by rendering a process into a status. This kind of process reduction is particularly visible when the deployment of normative terms implies the replacement of history with linearity, and the stipulation of a singular (or necessary) path toward development, rather than the coexistence of plurality. This highlights the necessity to historicize developments of cosmopolitanization in the context of changing cultural conditions and political contingencies , rather than to delineate categories of cosmopolitanism. 5. Methodological cosmopolitanism points to a new research trend that aims to overcome the methodological nationalism that dominates much of the social sciences (Beck 2001). It establishes a kind of “methodological scepticism” as a vector of research for opening up concepts and methodological principles of modern sociology, most notably regarding the nation-state as the axiomatic unit of analysis. For more details, see the special issue of the British Journal of Sociology, vol. 57, no. 1 (2006), edited by Ulrich Beck and Natan Sznaider. 154 notes to pages 11–71 6. The debate about the “normalcy” of mass murderers in the political realm has always been part of the controversy with regard to the uniqueness or “normalcy” of the crimes the Nazis committed. This is also true at the more personal level, as seen in the postwar debates about the “normalcy” of Adolf Eichmann (see Arendt 1963). 7. Our distinction draws on a similar pairing proposed by Dan Diner (2003), who distinguishes between Erinnerungsgeschichte (memory history) and Nationalgeschichte (national history). 8. The intertwining of nationalism and cosmopolitanism and related questions of solidarity have attracted a great deal of attention among social and political theorists. Sociological accounts of this relationship can be found in articles by Craig Calhoun (2002) and Gerard Delanty (1999). chapter 2 1. Judith Shklar, like Hannah Arendt, was a Jewish refugee who went to the United States. Shklar’s thinking is also shaped by the breakdown of an orderly world. chapter 3 1. For an in-depth critique of this methodological nationalism, see the aforementioned articles on cosmopolitanism in a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology, vol. 57, no. 1 (2006). 2. Schmitt’s agenda was to show that all modern political concepts are actually theological (such as the transition from the sovereignty of God to that of the state), whereas Agamben’s agenda is to reveal the liberal state as a sham. Clearly these are not contradictory claims. chapter 4 1.See http://www.armenian-genocide.org/keyword_search.Crimes+against+humanity/ Affirmation.160/current_category.7/affirmation_detail.html. chapter 5 1. There has been recent academic interest in Jaspers’s role in West Germany’s new postwar identity. In particular, see Benhabib 2006; Diner 1997; Fine 2000; Moses 2007; Olick 2005; Rabinbach 2001; Sznaider 2007. 2. This was also connected to a new form of citizenship that in German is called Verfassungspatriotismus (constitutional patriotism), which basically suggests identification with the nation through procedural associations rather than ethnic membership. notes to pages 73–92 155 This, of course, is completely taken for granted in the United States, but it constituted a reversal of fortunes for Germans. The term was coined by the German political scientist Dolf Sternberger (1979) and popularized by Jürgen Habermas. 3. Article 8 of the constitution of the International Military Tribunal states, “The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the Tribunal determines that justice so requires.” See http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/ imtconst.asp (accessed May 15, 2009). 4. Even the film showing the concentration camps...