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Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory
Unlike the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, or Armenia, scant attention has been paid to the human tragedies analyzed in this book. From German Southwest Africa (now Namibia), Burundi, and eastern Congo to Tasmania, Tibet, and Kurdistan, from the mass killings of the Roms by the Nazis to the extermination of the Assyrians in Ottoman Turkey, the mind reels when confronted with the inhuman acts that have been consigned to oblivion.
Forgotten Oblivion, Denial, and Memory gathers eight essays about genocidal conflicts that are unremembered and, as a consequence, understudied. The contributors, scholars in political science, anthropology, history, and other fields, seek to restore these mass killings to the place they deserve in the public consciousness. Remembrance of long forgotten crimes is not the volume's only purpose—equally significant are the rich quarry of empirical data offered in each chapter, the theoretical insights provided, and the comparative perspectives suggested for the analysis of genocidal phenomena. While each genocide is unique in its circumstances and motives, the essays in this volume explain that deliberate concealment and manipulation of the facts by the perpetrators are more often the rule than the exception, and that memory often tends to distort the past and blame the victims while exonerating the killers.
Although the cases discussed here are but a sample of a litany going back to biblical times, Forgotten Genocides offers an important examination of the diversity of contexts out of which repeatedly emerge the same hideous realities.
Forgotten Oblivion, Denial, and Memory gathers eight essays about genocidal conflicts that are unremembered and, as a consequence, understudied. The contributors, scholars in political science, anthropology, history, and other fields, seek to restore these mass killings to the place they deserve in the public consciousness. Remembrance of long forgotten crimes is not the volume's only purpose—equally significant are the rich quarry of empirical data offered in each chapter, the theoretical insights provided, and the comparative perspectives suggested for the analysis of genocidal phenomena. While each genocide is unique in its circumstances and motives, the essays in this volume explain that deliberate concealment and manipulation of the facts by the perpetrators are more often the rule than the exception, and that memory often tends to distort the past and blame the victims while exonerating the killers.
Although the cases discussed here are but a sample of a litany going back to biblical times, Forgotten Genocides offers an important examination of the diversity of contexts out of which repeatedly emerge the same hideous realities.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionAfrica
200 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 15, 2020
As I finish a summer semester of genocide studies, this book remarks my last reading on the topic for my background readings to enrich my study, at least for a while to come, because this subject is of course truly interesting for worth to study again and again.
Like its title, it sheds light on the most forgotten genocides in modern history, ones that you barely even encounter in academic studies.
It’s interesting to see how the global consciousness, which puts aside genocides, can’t deal with the forgotten ones even when it does approach the subject. The conclusion? Like always, the U.N and the world never show up on time to stop the next horror.
Like its title, it sheds light on the most forgotten genocides in modern history, ones that you barely even encounter in academic studies.
It’s interesting to see how the global consciousness, which puts aside genocides, can’t deal with the forgotten ones even when it does approach the subject. The conclusion? Like always, the U.N and the world never show up on time to stop the next horror.
April 4, 2014
This book contains an excellent series of articles on genocides that have been largely forgotten or denied. The scholarship is first class.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews