Abstract
None
Highlights
In her victim-centred approach to crime, Millet zooms in on the experiences of those whose lives have been mutilated by some of the worst instances of mass political violence: slaves captured and sold in the Americas, the indigenous African groups forced into the German colonial army in German South West Africa and the Sonderkommandos, Jews pushed by the Nazis to assist in the extermination project
While slaves were seen as “calibrated ontologically” to fit masters’ desires, whims, judgements, the enslaved remained committed to freedom, upsetting the master–slave dialectic (29). Reading chroniclers of those times depicting black people as a “savage multitude”, perverse, godless, and ignorant, Millet observes “African diversity was recalibrated under slavery as a singular race” who had to be tamed to accept their inferiority and homogeneity (33–4)
Narratives of two old slaves, Sibell and Ashy, illustrate the internal split: Africa remained integral to their identities, prior subject positions contrasting their current objectification
Summary
In her victim-centred approach to crime, Millet zooms in on the experiences of those whose lives have been mutilated by some of the worst instances of mass political violence: slaves captured and sold in the Americas, the indigenous African groups forced into the German colonial army in German South West Africa and the Sonderkommandos, Jews pushed by the Nazis to assist in the extermination project. The book’s three parts track the subjectivity of persecution by blending historical data with narratives which document the individual and collective transformations triggered by systematic persecution, the sensus communis (“shared sense”) of victim experiences, contrasting it with that of perpetrators. Aside from its contribution to genocide studies, the study’s focus and design can inform debates on victimhood and accountability within transitional justice, peace psychology and state crime victimology.
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