Beyond denial: Justifications of mass violence as an agenda for memory studies

Abstract

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 challenges memory studies to analyze transmissions of discourses which justify mass violence and challenge the focus on denial. On the one hand, the Russian regime’s claim to undertake “denazification” and prevent a “genocide” expounds the seminal role of cultural memory in politics. The weaponization of history, international law, and religion is widely accepted in Russian society and by global populisms. On the other hand, the invasion came as a surprise even to many experts because in politics, media, and research, justifications of mass violence are often dismissed as pretexts distracting from facts. Yet, the dismissal entails a major lacuna: we know too little about how justifications travel through societies and have a long-term impact. The article proposes that while acts of mass violence alter political and socio-economic realities, justifications of mass violence establish the linguistic and heuristic parameter for their subsequent juridical, moral, and scholarly evaluation. Normalizations of justifications contribute to perpetuating societal fault lines and set the frame for further conflict. The memory studies focus on transgenerational transmissions of psycho-social sequalae of violence laid the groundwork for understanding longue durée transmissions. However, memory studies have focused on denial as a key psychological and political driving force of transmissions, while, for instance, Russian and Serbian memory cultures are shaped by both denial and outright affirmations—not-even-denial—of past mass violence as model for present politics. Memory studies provide the appropriate conceptual space as a framework for addressing implicit normalizations and explicit affirmations of justifications of mass violence.