1st Edition
The Genocide Principle Perspectives from Psychoanalysis, the Social Sciences, and Philosophy
Introduction Chapter 1: Kiernan on History Chapter 2: Bauman on the Holocaust Chapter 3: Foucault on State Racism Chapter 4: Weisband on the “Macabresque” Chapter 5: Waller on Group Phenomena Chapter 6: Charny on the Cancer Metaphor Chapter 7: Moses on Permanent Security Chapter 8: Semelin on Purification and Destruction Chapter 9: Derrida on Sovereignty, Cruelty, and Oneness References
Biography
Alan Bass, PhD, is a psychoanalyst practicing in New York City and is on the graduate philosophy faculty at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of Difference and Disavowal: The Trauma of Eros; Interpretation and Difference: The Strangeness of Care; and Fetishism, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy , many articles, and the translator of four books by Jacques Derrida.
“Grounded in erudite historical research, Alan Bass’ psychoanalytic reflections on genocide pose the haunting question if the predilection for mass violence is a manifestation of human nature. Analyzing the unconscious logic of genocide, he demonstrates with compelling theoretical rigor why we need psychoanalysis to understand that genocide presupposes a fetish for purity and fear of contamination and satisfies an unconscious need. This is an urgent and indispensable book in our era of genocidal violence and the emergence of new forms of racism, deportations, and warfare across the globe.”
Gabriele M. Schwab is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, with specializations in Comparative Literature and Anthropology. She received her PhD at the University of Constance in 1976 and a PhD in Psychoanalysis from the New Center for Psychoanalysis in LA in 2009. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Heisenberg Fellowship, her work ranges across critical theory, psychoanalysis, trauma studies, ecology, anthropology, and 20th- and 21st- century comparative literatures.
“Alan Bass’ book has provided us with a valuable tool for comprehending the incomprehensible “banality of genocide”. Drawing on a sophisticated psychoanalytic and philosophical knowledge, he offers a subtle analysis of what is the most hyperbolic implementation of human cruelty.”
Sergio Benvenuto, psychoanalyst and philosopher, has been a member of the Italian Council of Scientific Research (Rome). He founded and edited the European Journal of Psychoanalysis, and he is the president of Elvio Fachinelli Institute in Italy. He has authored several books in different languages; his most recent work is Lacan, Kris and the Psychoanalytic Legacy: The Brain Eater (Routledge).
