Memory and Genocide ─ On What Remains and the Possibility of Representation

In recent years, the question of representation has been widely discussed in Holocaust studies. Yet the question of the ‘aftermaths’ of acts of genocide warrants more detailed research. This pathbreaking book focusses on the ethical, the aesthetic, and more scholarly dimension of how genocide-related works of art, documentary and feature films, literary works, museums, music, and law translate and are translated as representative of real acts of genocide. In other words, these genocide-related modes of representation that translate, displace and produce acts of remembrance of genocidal experience in terms of something else, as mediating processes materialized in the aftermath. In this sense, such modes of representation are analysed in relation to the interplay of two globally and locally circulating memories as modes of dealing with already committed acts of genocide. The possibility of representation is also examined in light of what remains in the aftermath and the idea of the untranslatability of acts of genocide. The contributions to this book critically discuss transitional justice mechanisms and reconciliation commissions in the processes of coming to terms with such acts that remain as memory; examine strategies of conflict management and reconciliation in their influence on social memories and on overcoming suffering and silencing on a broader social level. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of memory studies, transitional justice, sociology and social anthropology.

Ralph Buchenhorst is Senior Research Fellow at the Graduate School Society and Culture in Motion at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and his habilitation (German qualification for full professorship) from the University of Potsdam. Buchenhorst has been a DAAD guest professor of philosophy and cultural studies at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Among his recent book publications are Von Fremdheit lernen. Zum produktiven Umgang mit Erfahrungen des Fremden im Kontext der Globalisierung (Learning from Alienation. How to Engage Productively with Diversity in Times of Globalization, 2015), editor; Das Element des Nachlebens. Zur Frage der Darstellbarkeit der Shoah in Philosophie, Kulturtheorie und Kunst (The Element of Afterlife. On the Limits of the Shoah's Representation in Philosophy, Cultural Theory and Art, 2012), author; Observaciones urbanas. BenjamA-n y las nuevas ciudades (Urban Observations: Walter Benjamin and the New Cities, 2010), editor together with Miguel Vedda; PolA-ticas de la memoria: Tensiones entre la imagen y la palabra (The Politics of Remembrance: Tensions between Image and Text, 2007), editor together with Sandra Lorenzano Fazil Moradi is a doctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is also a member of the International Max Planck Research School, Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment, and Law, Organization, Science and Technology at Department of Anthropology in Halle, where he teaches the course, a€?Anthropography of Genocide.a€ His doctoral research, titled, a€?Beyond the al-AnfAl in Post-BaE?th Kurdistan: On the force of memory in the pursuit of justice,a€ is anchored in the Kurdish rural population's narration of memory and injustice of the BaE?thi Iraqi state's al-AnfAl operations (1987-91). Among his forthcoming publications are: Moradi, Fazil, Adel Daoud et al. a€?Iraq.a€ In The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty, 2nd edition: Moradi, Fazil. a€?The Force of Writing in Genocide: On Sexual Violence in the al-AnfAl Operations and beyond.a€ In Sanford, Victoria, et al. Ed., Gender Violence, Conflict and the State. Rutgers University Press; Moradi, Fazil. a€?Dawn in Salara€?s 12m2 Atelier: The Artista€?s Third Universe in the City of SulaimanAR,a€ In Vienna Yearbook for Kurdish Studies. Edited by Austrian Association for Kurdish Studies and European Center for Kurdish Studies. Moradi is currently co-authoring a paper with with Dr. Kjell Anderson, titled: a€?A?zARdARs at the Edge of the Universe: The A?zARdAR Genocide in Iraq.a€ Maria Six-Hohenbalken is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna She is currently Elise-Richter scholar (a career development program for female senior post-docs for preparing the habilitation thesis, financed by the Austrian Science Funds). Her main topics of research: Anthropology of Violence, Memory Studies, Diaspora and Transnationalism. She is the co-editor of the Vienna Yearbook for Kurdish Studies. Among her recent publications are a€?We do really need Hollywooda€ - Filmmaking and Remembrance of Acts of Genocide in the Kurdish Transnation (ed. Monika Palmberger, Jelena Tosic a€?Memory, Agency and Mobilitya€, Palgrave, 2015).