Powerful epistemic forces in the world today seek to make history go away and to replace it with a universal impulse called human rights. Human rights denies the existence of history, instead looking only to the here and now and asking who did what to whom, so that perpetrators may be punished and victims vindicated. The arena of human rights is that of the courtroom, specifically the post-atrocity tribunal. When atrocities are committed, human rights activists find the perpetrators, name them and shame them, maybe even put them in jail. What these activists rarely seek to do is understand why
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