Ecologies of violence: Cultural memory (studies) and the genocide–ecocide nexus

Abstract

Ecocide and large-scale ecological degradation raise critical questions regarding guilt, justice, and responsibility. The complexity and scale of ecological violence present a singular challenge for memory studies, especially when it comes to understanding how we are implicated in this violence. Often, the way ecological violence is framed as violence relies on repertoires, forms and conventions for representing and commemorating genocides and other acts of large-scale violence against humans. Moreover, cultural forms are able to reveal the historical, structural and discursive links between crimes against humanity and crimes against nature. To explore the implications of these ‘ecologies of violence’ for memory studies, this essay brings together two major strands in the field that have so far not intersected in a substantial way: the turn towards the figure of the perpetrator and to questions of guilt, complicity/implication on the one hand, and on the other, the turn towards the environment and the non-human. The increased interest in the question of perpetration and complicity has gone hand in hand with a critical interrogation of the perpetrator–victim–bystander triad and a shift towards more relational and dynamic conceptions of violence. The environmental turn in memory studies is beginning to rethink memory in terms of more-than-human temporalities or scales, as well as developing new conceptualizations of trauma and victimhood. The aim of this essay is twofold: first, it will briefly sketch each of these developments, bringing out possible points of convergence and divergence. Second, it will explore the potential for memory studies in bringing these two strands together, taking the re-emergence of tribunal theatre as a key example of the cultural imaginary of the genocide–ecocide nexus.