On the Social Construction of Moral Universals

Alexander, Jeffrey C.

doi:10.1177/1368431002005001001

Cited by 109 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Other concepts point to an imperative to understand memory as a force that can transform the nation-state. They include Rothberg's (2009) "multidirectional memory," which underscores the dialogical interactions, struggles for recognition, and intercultural dynamics that occur on the platform provided by Holocaust memory, Landsberg's (2004) "prosthetic memory," which suggests the possibility of possessing memories of events that one has not lived through, and Alexander's (2002) "moral universals" denoting a post-Holocaust ethics, which revolves around a "sacred-evil." Erll (2011:12) goes so far as to suggest that "all cultural memory must 'travel,' be kept in motion, in order to 'stay alive.'"…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Such Hatred Has Never Flourished on Our Soil”: The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Turkey and Spain

Karakaya

Baer²

2019

Sociological Forum

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In this article, we analyze local Holocaust Remembrance Day (HRD) ceremonies promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in Spain and Turkey. We investigate whether these memory practices have the potential to lead to a cosmopolitan engagement with the host countries’ own pasts. Focused on the same memorial events in highly contrasting and diverse national contexts, this article examines how supranational memory discourses are adopted and reinterpreted within the nation‐state framework. Our ethnographic observation of the commemorations and analysis of the speeches between 2011 and 2018 in Turkey and 2005 and 2018 in Spain show that the Spanish ceremony can be defined as porous and to a certain degree open to multivocality—given the participation of different mnemonic communities—while the Turkish one is sealed and does not allow for the possibility of disrupting its self‐congratulatory national memory narrative. Paradoxically, in both cases, especially in Turkey, the national legitimation profiles are bolstered by the universal frameworks that Holocaust memory provides. Even though memory travels transnationally, the nation‐state still is the most powerful translator of this past. This results in the rendition of pre‐Holocaust nostalgic pasts as a multicultural heaven where different groups, including the Jewish community, lived in harmony.

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Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Such Hatred Has Never Flourished on Our Soil”: The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Turkey and Spain

Karakaya

Baer²

2019

Sociological Forum

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“…Because it feeds into a progressivist western narrative where the new is always better, the new is always more interesting, the new always goes beyond history or transfigures history. [34] and Jeffrey Alexander [35]. Their work is characterized by a strong belief in the emancipatory potential, the cathartic or healing effects of remembering across cultural and national borders.…”

Section: Alan Gibbsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonizing Trauma Studies Round-Table Discussion

et al. 2015

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This round-table, which featured literary critics Professor Stef Craps, Professor Bryan Cheyette and Dr. Alan Gibbs, was recorded as part of the “Decolonizing Trauma Studies” symposium organized by Dr. Sonya Andermahr and Dr. Larissa Allwork at The School of The Arts, The University of Northampton (15 May 2015). Convened a week after the University of Zaragoza’s “Memory Frictions” conference, where Cheyette, Gibbs, Andermahr and Allwork gave papers, the Northampton symposium and round-table was sponsored by The School of The Arts to coincide with Andermahr’s guest editorship of this special issue of Humanities. Craps, Cheyette and Gibbs addressed five questions during the round-table. Namely, does trauma studies suffer from a form of psychological universalism? Do you see any signs that trauma studies is becoming more decolonized? What are the challenges of a decolonized trauma studies for disciplinary thinking? How does a decolonized trauma studies relate to pedagogical ethics? Finally, where do you see the future of the field? While this edited transcript retains a certain informality of style, it offers a significant contribution to knowledge by capturing a unique exchange between three key thinkers in contemporary trauma studies, providing a timely analysis of the impact of postcolonial theory on trauma studies, the state of the field and its future possibilities. Issues addressed include the problematic scholarly tendency to universalize a western model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); the question of the centrality of the Holocaust in trauma studies and the implications of this for the study of atrocities globally; the vexed issues posed by the representation of perpetrators; as well as how the basic tenets of western cultural trauma theory, until recently so often characterized by a Caruth-inspired focus on belatedness and afterwardness, are being rethought, both in response to developments in the US and in answer to the challenge to ‘decolonize’ trauma studies.

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“…The politics of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur and other recent cases have had a profound influence on the international perception of genocide in general. However, the 'social construction' of 'the Holocaust' as a 'sacred-evil' event over the last half-century (Alexander, 2002) -and with it the politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict (Alexander, 2009) -has also had a crucial bearing. Thus genocide scholarship has developed in highly charged political and cultural contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From comparative to international genocide studies: The international production of genocide in 20th-century Europe

Shaw

2011

European Journal of International Relations

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Genocide is widely seen as a phenomenon of domestic politics, which becomes of international significance because it offends against international law. Hence there are as yet inadequate International Relations analyses of the production of genocide. This article challenges the idea of the domestic genesis of genocide, and critiques the corresponding approach of 'comparative genocide studies' which is dominant in the field. It analyses the emergence of more fruitful 'relational' and 'international' approaches in critical genocide studies, while identifying the limitations of their accounts of the 'international system'. As first steps towards an adequate international account, the article then explores questions of the international meaning and construction of genocidal relations, and of international relations as the context of genocide. It argues for a historical and sociological approach to the international relations of genocide, and examines 20th-century European genocide in this light. Arguing for a broader conception of this historical experience than is suggested by an exclusive focus on the Holocaust, the article offers an interpretation of genocide as increasingly endemic and systemic in international relations in the first half of the century. It concludes by arguing that this account offers a starting point, but not a model, for analyses of genocide in global international relations in the 21st century.

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On the Social Construction of Moral Universals

Cited by 109 publications

References 28 publications

“Such Hatred Has Never Flourished on Our Soil”: The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Turkey and Spain

“Such Hatred Has Never Flourished on Our Soil”: The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Turkey and Spain

Decolonizing Trauma Studies Round-Table Discussion

From comparative to international genocide studies: The international production of genocide in 20th-century Europe

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