Knowing about Genocide Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles

by Joachim J. Savelsberg (Author)
March 2021
First Edition
Paperback
$34.95, £29.00
Title Details

Rights: Available worldwide
Pages: 264
ISBN: 9780520380189
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.99
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 17 illustrations, 1 map, 7 tables

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About the Book

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of the University of Minnesota. Learn more at the TOME website, available at openmonographs.org.

How do victims and perpetrators generate conflicting knowledge about genocide? Using a sociology of knowledge approach, Savelsberg answers this question for the Armenian genocide committed in the context of the First World War. Focusing on Armenians and Turks, he examines strategies of silencing, denial, and acknowledgment in everyday interaction, public rituals, law, and politics. Drawing on interviews, ethnographic accounts, documents, and eyewitness testimony, Savelsberg illuminates the social processes that drive dueling versions of history. He reveals counterproductive consequences of denial in an age of human rights hegemony, with implications for populist disinformation campaigns against overwhelming evidence.

About the Author

Joachim J. Savelsberg is Professor of Sociology and Law and holder of the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur.

Reviews

"This pioneering sociology of knowledge of the Armenian genocide is critical for understanding the background to Turkish denial as the final stage of genocide. Savelsberg’s epistemic study is a warning against a revived shade of an Orwellian order, with its 'alternative realities' and 'post-truths.'"—Dr. Claire Mouradian, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

"Knowledge denial is a deadly phenomenon and an urgent problem. Confronting the Armenian genocide, Joachim Savelsberg illuminates how mass harm has been negated or acknowledged, through painstaking research, unrivaled expertise, and ethical commitment."—Lois Presser, author of Inside Story: How Narratives Drive Mass Harm

"Savelsberg has done a brilliant job in this very unique work that for the first time analyzes the Armenian genocide from the vantage point of knowledge construction. He aptly brings in the standpoints of Armenians and Turks on the one side and analyzes the layering of knowledge through interaction to sedimentation and finally to rituals. A must-read for all interested in collective violence, social movements, and sociology of knowledge."—Fatma Müge Göçek, author of Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789–2009