Dr. Yücel Güçlü, a career diplomat in the Turkish Foreign Ministry, has written a study of what he calls “the Armenian events” in Cilicia between 1914 and 1923. The author makes it clear in the introduction to the book that his intent is to challenge the idea that the Armenians were subjected to genocide during and after World War I. To achieve this goal he frames the issue in terms of “Armenian revolutionary and separatist movements,” countered by “the Turkish measures of self-defense,” but complicated by “Allied schemes” (p. 2).

In his review of my book Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (IJMES 44 [2012]: 199–201), Paul Silverstein concludes that my argument “in essence boils down to a central syllogism: modernity equals colonialism equals violence.” While I appreciate the time and the effort he put into reading and presenting my book to readers of IJMES, I need to say that this is simply not my argument. Using insights from anthropologist Marshal Sahlins, I examine colonial culture (generative of postcolonial events) and show how it has continued to shape the present and how it manifests itself mainly in the culture of nationalism, any allusion of which is totally absent from Silverstein's review. I define violence in a variety of ways—physical, symbolic, and textual—which all point to the power to transform, that is, to displace, to destroy, and ultimately to create. If a reader misses this idea, the entire argument will be overlooked. I made a complex argument taking into consideration time (i.e., change) and different agencies (i.e., a complex set of historical actors, not reducible to one single binary opposition).

I regret that Professor Hannoum believes I mischaracterized his argument. By their nature, book reviews synthesize and condense; they cannot capture all the nuances authors may have wished to convey in their larger work. For all of our shared interests and engagements, Professor Hannoum and I clearly disagree on the contours of the academic historiography of colonial Algeria, on the lasting influence of colonialism as a (violent) project of world-making, on the interplay of empirical description and theoretical reflection, and on the role of anthropological research in articulating a political critique of the present. Professor Hannoum's book was written as a polemic and thus invites argument. I encourage readers to examine his book and respond themselves.