Political imagination and the crime of crimes: Coming to terms with ‘genocide’ and ‘genocide blindness’

Abstract

Abstract:This paper deals critically with the process of coming to terms with 'genocide'. It starts from the observation that conventional philosophical and legal approaches to capturing the essence of 'genocide' through an improved definition necessarily fail to adapt to the everchanging nature of political violence. Faced with this challenge, the paper suggests that the contemporary debate on genocide (and its denial) should be complemented with a focus on transforming the perceptive and interpretive frameworks through which acts of violence are discussed in the public sphere. The main purpose of this paper is to contribute, from the vantage point of political theory, to this debate by offering a novel normative perspective on negative reactions to genocide. Hence, I argue that it is productive to speak of 'genocide blindness' in cases when the members of the public sphere are simply incapable of seeing an instance of violence as genocidal. To establish this claim, the paper introduces Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on 'aspect-seeing' so as to underline the importance of changing the way how political violence is perceived and interpreted. In a second step, the paper turns to María Pía Lara's theory of storytelling as a concrete mechanism for triggering and instituting this kind of change.

Monumental Names

“…What role does scale play in naming acts of violence a mass killing, a massacre, a politicide (Campbell 2011)? If binding definitions and typologies of genocide are detrimental to recognition of violence (Thaler 2014), can justice hinge on counting the exact number of the dead? Derrida says that friends are "incalculable singularities, where it be preferable not to reckon with friends as one counts and reckons with things" (Derrida 2005a: 20).…”

Neo-Grotian predicaments: On Larry May’s theory of international criminal law

“…This dialectical movement between defining an act of violence as genocidal and the emergence of new acts of violence is a problem that has so far received scant attention. But I would maintain that ignoring this political dimension of the debate around genocide is rather consequential (see Thaler, 2014).…”