1st Edition
Conceptualizing Mass Violence Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations
Conceptualizing Mass Violence draws attention to the conspicuous inability to inhibit mass violence in myriads forms and considers the plausible reasons for doing so. Focusing on a postcolonial perspective, the volume seeks to popularize and institutionalize the study of mass violence in South Asia.
The essays explore and deliberate upon the varied aspects of mass violence, namely revisionism, reconstruction, atrocities, trauma, memorialization and literature, the need for Holocaust education, and the criticality of dialogue and reconciliation. The language, content, and characteristics of mass violence/genocide explicitly reinforce its aggressive, transmuting, and multifaceted character and the consequent necessity to understand the same in a nuanced manner. The book is an attempt to do so as it takes episodes of mass violence for case study from all inhabited continents, from the twentieth century to the present. The volume studies ‘consciously enforced mass violence’ through an interdisciplinary approach and suggests that dialogue aimed at reconciliation is perhaps the singular agency via which a solution could be achieved from mass violence in the global context.
The volume is essential reading for postgraduate students and scholars from the interdisciplinary fields of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, History, Political Science, Sociology, World History, Human Rights, and Global Studies.
Introduction
1. Reading Mass Violence
Navras J. Aafreedi and Priya Singh
Part 1: Narratives
2. Violence and Violations: Betrayal Narratives in Atrocity Accounts
Dennis B. Klein
3. Holocaust survivors in Mexico: Intersecting and Conflicting Narratives of Open Doors, Welcoming Society and Personal Hardships
Daniela Gleizer and Yael Siman
4. Historical Narratives, the Perpetuation of Trauma, and the Work of Vamık Volkan
Reuven Firestone
Part 2: Revisionism & Reconstruction
5. Holocaust, Propaganda, and the Distortion of History in the Former Soviet Space
Charles E. Ehrlich
6. The Genocide of 1971 in Bangladesh: Lessons from History
Srimanti Sarkar
7. Holocaust Denial and Minimization in the Indian Urdu Press
Md. Muddassir Quamar
Part 3: Education
8. Holocaust Studies in Australia: Moving from family and community remembrance to human rights and prevention of mass violence
Suzanne D. Rutland and Suzanne Hampel
9. New Developments in Holocaust & Genocide Education in South Africa: : The case study of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre
Tali Nates
10. A Case of Naive Normalization? India's Misbeliefs about Hitler and Schooling on the Holocaust
Anubhav Roy
11. Holocaust Education in India and its Challenges
Navras J. Aafreedi
Part 4: Reflections
12. Sonderkommando Photo 4 and the Portrayal of the Invisible
David Patterson
13. Overcoming "Intimate Hatreds:" Reflections on Violence against Yazidis
Güneş Murat Tezcür and Tutku Ayhan
14. The State and its Margins: Changing Notions of Marginality in Turkey
Anita Sengupta
Part 5: Trauma
15. Pinochet's Dictatorship and Reflections on Trauma in Chile: How much have we learned in terms of human rights?
Nancy Nicholls Lopeandía
Part 6: Memorialization
16. ‘Grassroots’ Holocaust Museums: Revealing Untold Stories
Stephanie Shosh Rotem
17. Fabric, Food, Song: The Quiet Continuities in Bengali Life Seventy Years After Partition
Rituparna Roy
Part 7: Literature
18. The Failure of Secular Publics and the Rise of the Jewish Religious Public in Nathan Englander’s For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Fuzail Asar Siddiqi
Part 8: Dialogue & Reconciliation
19. The 2002 Alexandria Summit and Its Follow Up
David Rosen
Biography
Navras J. Aafreedi is Assistant Professor of History at Presidency University, Kolkata, and Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, New York. His publications include his monograph Jews, Judaizing Movements and the Traditions of Israelite Descent in South Asia.
Priya Singh is Associate Director at Asia in Global Affairs (www.asiaingloblaffairs.in). Priya is a political scientist with an interest in issues pertaining to geo-politics, nationalism, post-nationalism, identity, state formation and gender. She has authored, edited and co-edited books on Israel and the Middle East.
