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24 results

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  • 5 - Pondering Hatred

  • from Part I - Causes and Dynamics
  • Edited by Thomas Brudholm, University of Copenhagen, Johannes Lang
  • Book:
    Emotions and Mass Atrocity
    Published online:
    16 March 2018
    Print publication:
    22 March 2018, pp 81-103

  • Summary

    In studies of genocide and other mass atrocities, the importance of hatred for our understanding of the causes and dynamics of such violence is an issue of continued contestation. In the context of transitional justice and reconciliation, notions of hatred as a lingering remainder to be appeased by justice or overcome through forgiveness abound. However, in spite of the many references to hatred, and in spite of the intensity with which the significance of hatred is affirmed or denied, focused and explorative investigations of hatred are few and far-between. This chapter embarks on such an investigation, not just to qualify the conceptual basis for discussion of hatred’s causal role, but more importantly to invite reflection on the very nature and possible forms of hatred at stake in mass atrocities. Drawing on insights from philosophical and sociological understandings of the nature, meaning, and location of the emotions, Thomas Brudholm and Birgitte S. Johansen aim to bring a more nuanced understanding of hatred to the field of genocide studies, not least by probing the premises of conventional Western notions of hatred and passions more generally as irrational, unmanageable, unpredictable, and interiorized.

Emotions and Mass Atrocity
  • Philosophical and Theoretical Explorations
  • Edited by Thomas Brudholm, Johannes Lang
  • Published online:
    16 March 2018
    Print publication:
    22 March 2018
  • The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear, anger, horror, shame and hatred. Yet we don't understand enough about how 'ordinary' emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces, deeply involved in the history of mass violence. Drawing on recent insights from philosophy, psychology, history, and the social sciences, this volume examines the emotions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Editors Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang have brought together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature, value, and role of emotions as they relate to the causes and dynamics of mass atrocities. The result is a new perspective on the social, political, and moral dimensions of emotions in the history of collective violence and its aftermath.

The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity
  • Interdisciplinary Perspectives
  • Edited by Thomas Brudholm, Thomas Cushman
  • Published online:
    01 September 2009
    Print publication:
    16 February 2009
  • A peculiar and fascinating aspect of many responses to mass atrocities is the creative and eclectic use of religious language and frameworks. Some crimes are so extreme that they 'cry out to heaven', drawing people to employ religious vocabulary to make meaning of and to judge what happened, to deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, and to re-establish hope and trust in their lives. Moreover, in recent years, religious actors have become increasingly influential in worldwide contexts of conflict-resolution and transitional justice. This collection offers a critical assessment of the possibilities and problems pertaining to attempts to bring religious - or semi-religious - allegiances and perspectives to bear in responses to the mass atrocities of our time: When and how can religious language or religious beliefs and practices be either necessary or helpful? And what are the problems and reasons for caution or critique? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore these questions and offer a range of original explanatory and normative perspectives.

  • Introduction: The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity

  • Edited by Thomas Brudholm, University of Copenhagen, Thomas Cushman, Wellesley College, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity
    Published online:
    01 September 2009
    Print publication:
    16 February 2009, pp 1-18

  • Summary

    There are some deeds that cry out to heaven. These deeds are not only an outrage to our moral sense, they seem to violate a fundamental awareness of the constitution of humanity.

    Peter Berger, A Rumor of Angels (1970).

    So if you want to stay within the religious, you must struggle.

    Ludwig Wittgenstein, Vermischte Bemerkungen (1998).

    For the most part, those who think about the capacity of human beings to commit acts of spectacular cruelty against each other have puzzled over the question: why? The problem of evil has been a central concern of theologians and philosophers and has also increasingly concerned social scientists and historians who have tried to explain the mass atrocities of the twentieth century. There is, of course, no consensus as to how to explain mass atrocity or even on the question of whether or not it can be explained. For some, the pessimistic conclusion, vide Hegel, is that “history is a slaughterbench” and modernity has only intensified its bloody toll. History appears to be a progression of events, some of them quite atrocious, the causes of which are multifarious, but one thing we observe is that in the face of mass atrocity, human societies have developed various ways of coming to terms with the horrific events that so often punctuate their existence. So, in addition to looking for the causes of such events, we must also address the question of how societies respond to them.

  • 6 - On the Advocacy of Forgiveness after Mass Atrocities

  • Edited by Thomas Brudholm, University of Copenhagen, Thomas Cushman, Wellesley College, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity
    Published online:
    01 September 2009
    Print publication:
    16 February 2009, pp 124-154

  • Summary

    Forgiveness is pitiless. It forgets the victim. It negates the right of the victim to his own life. […] It cultivates sensitiveness toward the murderer at the price of insensitiveness toward the victim […] The face of forgiveness is mild, but how stony to the slaughtered.

    Cynthia Ozick (1998).

    There is an imprudent manner of recommending forgiveness to us that rather is a means for making us disgusted with it.

    Vladimir Jankélévitch (2005).

    In August 2007, an Iraqi delegation visited Denmark and a hearing was held in the Danish Parliament. The topic was the role of religion in relation to reconciliation in Iraq and the delegation was led by the Anglican vicar Andrew White who has for some years been involved in peace-work in Iraq and the Middle East. The hearing was plagued by the usual problems of simultaneous translation and minds, or maybe just mine, started to drift. Yet, near the end, a member of the audience asked the panel to elaborate their perspectives on Desmond Tutu's famous statement that, as one speaker put it, “there can be no future without reconciliation.” Of course, what Tutu has written and proclaimed on numerous occasions is something different and more controversial, namely that there can be no future without forgiveness (Tutu, 1999). What was interesting to me was not the misquotation as such, but the fact that the topic of forgiveness had not been mentioned a single time during the hearing – not even by the vicar, who otherwise jested and spoke in ways reminiscent of the charismatic performances of his much more well-known Anglican fellow. […]

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