ABSTRACT
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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |16 pages
Introduction
part 1|42 pages
Narratives
chapter 3|16 pages
Holocaust survivors in Mexico
part 2|38 pages
Revisionism & reconstruction
part 3|54 pages
Education
chapter 8|15 pages
Holocaust education and remembrance in Australia
chapter 9|12 pages
New developments in Holocaust and genocide education in South Africa
chapter 10|12 pages
A case of naive normalization?
part 4|44 pages
Reflections
part 5|16 pages
Trauma
chapter 15|14 pages
Pinochet’s dictatorship and reflections on trauma in Chile
part 6|28 pages
Memorialization
chapter 17|14 pages
Fabric, food, song
part 7|13 pages
Literature
chapter 18|11 pages
The failure of secular publics and the rise of the Jewish religious public in Nathan Englander’s
part 8|12 pages
Dialogue and reconciliation