Genocide and the Terror of History

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 < http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/about-the-itf/stockholm-declaration.html> [04/07/11], < http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/about-the-itf/history-of-the-itf.html> [04/07/11], < http://www.hmd.org.uk> [04/07/11]. 2 Dan Diner, ‘Haider und der Schutzreflex Europas’, Die Welt (26 February 2000). It is noteworthy that the date of Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe is the liberation of Auschwitz while in Israel it is the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, indicating the existence of a specifically European narrative. 3 < http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/ > [04/07/11]. 4 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), p.8. See also Jeffrey Alexander et al., Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 5 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age, pp.201, 232. 6 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 7 Richard C. Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation 1939–1944 (New York: Hippocrene, 2001); Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 8 Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, 2 Vols. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005); Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, ‘Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing’, in Donald Bloxham and Robert Gerwarth, eds., Political Violence in Twentieth Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp.87–139, 225–231. 9 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1949] 1954), p.151. 10 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, pp.151–2. 11 Adriana Berger, ‘Mircea Eliade: Romanian Fascism and the History of Religions in the United States’, in Nancy Horowitz, ed. Tainted Greatness: Antisemitism and Cultural Heroes (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), pp.51–74. 12 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p.151. 13 Cristina Bejan, ‘The Paradox of the Young Generation in Interwar Romania’, SLOVO, Interdisciplinary Journal of Russian, East-Central European and Eurasian Affairs, 18:2 (2006), pp.115–128. See Mihail Sebastian, Journal: 1935–1944 (London: Pimlico, 2003), for a Romanian Jewish intellectual's contemporary observations and experiences of antisemitism. 14 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, p.162. 15 For ‘structure of experience’, see Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp.131–34. 16 Stef Craps, ‘Wor(l)ds of Grief: Traumatic Memory and Literary Witnessing in Cross Cultural Perspective’, Textual Practice, 23:4 (2009), p.5; Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), p.91; Robert W. Robin, Barbara Chester, and David Goldman, ‘Cumulative Trauma and PTSD in American Indian Communities’, in Ethnocultural Aspects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, eds. Anthony J. Marsella, et al. (Washington: American Psychological Association, 1996), pp.239–253; Catherine Lane West-Newman, ‘Anger in Legacies of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and Settler States’, European Journal of Social Theory, 7:2 (2004), pp.189–208. 17 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 51:2 (2003), p.581. 18 Charles R Figley, ‘Traumatology’, in Lester Kurtz, ed., Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict, 3 vols. (Oxford: Elsevie, 1999), vol. 3: p.2195. 19 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Sociology and Psychology, Part 1’, New Left Review, 46 (November-December 1967), pp.67–80, and ‘Sociology and Psychology, Part 2’, New Left Review, 47 (January-February 1968), pp.79–97. 20 Max M. Stern, ‘Fear of Death and Neurosis’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 16:1 (1968), p.12. 21 Vamik D Volkan, ‘Large-Group Identity: Border Psychology and Related Societal Processes’, Mind and Human Interaction, 13 (2003), pp.49–75. 22 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 23 Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, ‘The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma’, American Imago, 48:4 (1991), pp.425–454; Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers Casebook (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), pp.46–75. The reader can refer to literature cited here for technical details about brain functioning and trauma. 24 Bessel A. van der Kolk, ‘The Body Keeps Score: Memory and the Emerging Psychobiology of Post Traumatic Stress’, in Traumatic Stress, eds, Bessel A. Van der Kolk, Alexander C. McFarlane and Lars Weisaeth (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), p.291. 25 Wulf Kantsteiner, ‘Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies’, History and Theory, 41 (2002), pp.179–197. See generally Antonius C.G.M Robben and Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, eds, Cultures Under Siege (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Jeffrey Alexander et al, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Ron Eyerman, Cultural Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 26 Eg. Laurence J. Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, and Mark Barad, eds, Understanding Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Perri 6, Susannah Radstone, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher, ‘Introduction’, in Perri 6, Susannah Radstone, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher, eds, Public Emotions (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), p.3; Nigel C. Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). By contrast, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman's influential Empire of Trauma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp.6–7, 276, consciously eschew the psychiatric literature for a ‘constructionist’ approach influenced by Foucault. 27 Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (London and New York: Hogarth Press, 1939), p.100. For commentary, see Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p.31. 28 Laurence J. Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson, and Mark Barad, ‘Introduction: Inscribing Trauma in Culture, Bain, and Body’, in Kirmayer, Lemelson, and Barad, Understanding Trauma, p.10. 29 Allan Young, ‘Bruno and the Holy Fool: Myth, Mimesis, and the Transmission of Traumatic Memories’, in Kirmayer, Lemelson, and Barad, Understanding Trauma, pp.345–46. 30 Jeffrey K. Olick, ‘The Ciphered Transits of Collective Memory: Neo-Freudian Impressions’, Social Research, 75:1 (2008), pp.1–22; William Hirst and Gerald Echterhoff, ‘Creating Shared Memories in Conversation: Toward a Psychology of Collective Memory’, Social Research, 75:1 (2008), pp.183–216. 31 Bessel A. van der Kolk, James W. Hopper and Janet E. Osterman, ‘Exploring the Nature of Traumatic Memory: Combining Clinical Knowledge with Laboratory Methods’, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, & Trauma, 4 (2001), p.28. 32 For critical discussion, see Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p.155 and passim. 33 Lauren Berlant, ‘Trauma and Ineloquence’, Journal for Cultural Research, 5:1 (2001), p.43. Emphasis added. 34 Khaled Fattah and K. M. Fierke, ‘A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East’, European Journal of International Relations, 15 (2009), pp.67–93. Generally on such political emotions, see the important article by Ghassan Hage, ‘“Comes a Time we are all Enthusiasm”: Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times of Exighophobia’, Public Culture, 15:1 (2003), pp.65–89, and of course the work of Jacqueline Rose, e.g., The Question of Zion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). 35 Azmi Bishara ‘We Want to Live’, Al-Ahram (13–19 March 2010). Emphasis added. 36 Heinrich Graetz, ‘The Diaspora: Suffering and Spirit’, in Modern Jewish Thought: A Source Reader, ed. Bessel A. Van der Kolk, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Lars Weisaeth (New York: Schocken, 1977), p.20. 37 Dan Porat, ‘The Nation Revised: Teaching the Jewish Past in the Zionist Present (1890–1913)’, Jewish Social Studies, 13 (2006), pp.70–71. 38 Yael Zerubavel, ‘The Death of Memory and the Memory of Death: Masada and the Holocaust as Historical Metaphors’, Representations, 45 (1994), p.79. 39 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, p.581. 40 Robert D. Stolorow, Trauma and Human Existence (New York: The Analytic Press/Taylor and Francis, 2007), p.9. 41 David A.S. Garfield, Unbearable Affect, rev. 2nd ed. (London: Karnac Books, 2009), p.viii. 42 Samah Jabr, ‘The Palestinian Resistance: Its Legitimate Right and the Moral Duty’ Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (December 2003), p.45, p.67: < http://wrmea.org/archives/December_2003/0312045.html> [04/07/11]. 43 Leon Pinsker, Autoemancipation: An Appeal to his People by a Russian Jew (1882): < http://www.mideastweb.org/autoemancipation.htm> [04/07/11]. 44 Richard A. Grusin, ‘Premediation’, Criticism, 46:1 (2004), pp.17–39. 45 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, p.602. 46 Shimon Samuels, ‘From Durban to Durban: Identity Theft and Generic Hatred’. Presented at YIISA, 12 February 2009: < http://www.yale.edu/yiisa/YIISA-STSamuels-2.pdf> [04/07/11]. 47 Charles Krauthammer, ‘The Holocaust Declaration’, Washington Post (11 April 2008); Benny Morris, ‘This Holocaust Will be Different’, Jerusalem Post (18 January 2007). 48 Yair Sheleg, ‘An Endangered State’, Haaretz (3 September 2006). Emphasis added. 49 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp.35–36. 50 Gary Rosenblatt, ‘Recognizing And Responding To Real Enemies’, The Jewish Week (10 May 2011): < www.thejewishweek.com/editorial_opinion/gary_rosenblatt/recognizing_and_responding_real_enemies> [04/07/11]. 51 Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Israel's Fears, Amalek's Arsenal’, New York Times (17 May 2009). Emphasis added. 52 Mohammed Zaatari, ‘Blood flows freely in Nabatieh as Shiites mark Ashura’, Daily Star (29 December 2009). 53 Khaled Fattah and K. M. Fierke, ‘A Clash of Emotions: The Politics of Humiliation and Political Violence in the Middle East’, European Journal of International Relations 15 (2009), p.75. 54 Jennifer Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), p.43; Marianne Hirsch, ‘The Generation of Postmemory’, Poetics Today, 29:1 (2008), pp. 55 Robert E. Harkavy, ‘Defeat, National Humiliation and the Revenge Motif in International Politics’, International Politics, 37 (September 2000), pp.345–368. 56 Melvin R. Lansky, ‘Unbearable Shame, Splitting, and Forgiveness in the Resolution of Vengefulness’, Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 55:2 (2007), pp.571–593; Thomas J. Schefff, Bloody Revenge (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993); Heinz Kohut, ‘Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage’, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 27 (1972), pp.360–400; Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977). 57 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, pp. 579–616. 58 Tirzah Agassi, ‘In Conversation: Paradise Now Director Hany Abu-Assad’, Tikkun Magazine (27 May 2008): < http://www.tikkun.org/article.php?story = 20090327092512386> [04/07/11]. 59 Silvia Cattori, ‘Khaled Amayreh: A Dangerous Juncture in Palestinian history’, voltaire.net (11 March 2010): < http://www.voltairenet.org/article164407.html> [04/07/11]. 60 Todd Samuel Presner, ‘“Clear Heads, Solid Stomachs, and Hard Muscles”: Max Nordau and the Aesthetics of Jewish Regeneration’, Modernism/modernity, 10:2 (2003), pp.269–296; Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 61 Jyotirmaya Sharma, ‘History as Revenge and Retaliation: Rereading Savarkar's The War of Independence of 1857’, Economic and Political Weekly (12 May 2007) pp. 1717–19; Cf. Jyotirmaya Sharma, Terrifying Vision (Delhi: Viking Penguin, 2007). 62 Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1963), p.20. 63 Jyotirmaya Sharma, ‘History as Revenge and Retaliation’, p. 1719. 64 Jeffrey Goldberg, ‘Hollywood's Jewish Avenger’, Atlantic Monthly (September 2009). Gavriel Rosenfeld has observed this potential for upsetting conventional western perceptions of the Middle East conflict when he notes that ‘If Jews are not going to be pristine, morally, ethically upright people and are instead, willing to use sadism and violence, that changes the moral calculus a little bit. […] Maybe that changes the equation of how people perceive victims and perpetrators in the Middle East’. Cited in Danielle Berrin, ‘Oscar Buzz: The Impact of “Inglourious Basterds” on the Jews’, The Jewish Journal (24 February 2010). 65 Menachem Begin, The Revolt, rev. ed. (London: W.H. Allen, 1979), p.xxvi. 66 Address of Prime Minister Menahem Begin to the Knesset, 20 November 1977: < http://www.knesset.gov.il/process/docs/beginspeech_eng.htm> [04/07/11]. 67 Idith Zertal, Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 68 Dan Porat, ‘The Nation Revised’, pp.70–1. 69 Haim Hazaz, ‘The Sermon’, Partisan Review, 23 (Winter 1956), pp.173–75. Generally: David Biale, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History (New York: Schocken, 1986). 70 Nachman Ben-Yehuda, The Masada Myth (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 71 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, in Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken, 1968), pp.253–264. 72 Avi Shalit, ‘Leaving the Zionist Ghetto’, Haaretz (8 June 2007); Avraham Burg, The Holocaust Is Over (Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008); The Israeli psychologist Carlo Strenger regularly writes in these terms, e.g., ‘Israel is Trapped in Paranoid Vicious Circles’, Haaretz (31 December 2010); Anshel Pfeffer, ‘Comparing Iran to Nazis Harms Israel’, Haaretz (13 June 2009). Shavit's rebuke of Burg is reminiscent of Gershom Scholem's remark to Hannah Arendt that she did not sufficiently ‘love’ (display empathy for) the Jewish people. 73 E.g. Ruth Eglash, ‘Capetown: “Conscientious Objectors” Visit May Spur anti-Semitism’, Jerusalem Post (7 October 2009). 74 Leon Wieseltier ‘Against the Ethnic Panic of American Jews: Hitler is Dead’, The New Republic (27 May 2002). 75 Heinz Kohut, ‘Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage’, p.382. 76 Sylvia Cattori, ‘Khaled Amayreh’. 77 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, p.596. 78 Cited in Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, p. 586. 79 Simon Rawidowicz, Israel, the Ever-Dying People and Other Essays (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1986). Analogous is Paul Gilroy's complaint about the Afro-centrism in some African-American thought that overlooks the achievements of black American culture: Gilroy, Black Atlantic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 80 Marvin Hurvich, ‘The Place of Annihilation Anxieties in Psychoanalytic Theory’, p.593. I suspect that even otherwise self-disciplined colleagues in thrall to the terror of history may experience these emotions when reading this article. 81 I mean secular in the sense advanced by Edward Said. See his Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage, 1995), ch. 6, ‘Gods that Always Fail’. Said argued for ‘critical detachment’ and eschewal of ‘political gods’. Though this ethic certainly does not preclude political engagement, as Said's own career amply demonstrates, it does mean renouncing the temptation of ‘absolute certainties and a total, seamless view of reality that recognizes only disciples or enemies’: p.120. Exemplary is Hannah Arendt's critique of Zionism as misperceiving reality: ‘The Jewish State, 50 Years Later. Where Have Herzl's Politics Led’, in Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings (New York: Schocken, 2007), pp.375–387. For an application to Egyptian political culture, see Amal Treacher Kasbeh, ‘Postcolonial Subjectivity: Masculinity, Shame, Memory’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30:2 (2007), pp.281–299. 82 See Amal Treacher, ‘Circulating Emotions, Beliefs and Fantasies: The Middle East and the West’, Psychodynamic Practice, 13:4 (2007), p.354. 83 Thus Moshe Yaalon, Minister for Strategic Affairs in Netanyahu's Likud-led government. Cited in Isabel Kershner, ‘Leaked Documents Open a Door on Mideast Peace Talks’, New York Times (24 January 2011). 84 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Random House, 1980), p.231. 85 Joseph Massad, ‘Resisting the Nakba’, Al-Ahram Weekly (15–21 May 2008). 86 Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European (London: Verso, 2004), p.55.