El género y el futuro de los estudios sobre el genocidio y la prevención

Este artículo aborda los aportes de la investigación sobre género para la definición del delito de genocidio y para aprehenderlo como proceso histórico. Se afirma que la violencia de género es un elemento central de aquel crimen. Más allá de los debates sobre la violencia y la violación sexual, se argumenta que abordar estas atrocidades en general desde una perspectiva de género brinda herramientas importantes para un sistema de advertencia que debe ser incorporado a la metodología de investigación y a las estrategias de confección de informes de las Naciones Unidas, la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CPI), las organizaciones de derechos humanos y los organismos gubernamentales y servicios de inteligencia. Por medio de un breve análisis de los casos de Darfur y Srebrenica, el artículo demuestra el modo en que las conceptualizaciones que no incorporan la dimensión de género no logran reconocer y describir de manera adecuada los tipos específicos de violencia que son, en general, indicadores del crimen de genocidio. Además, se propone que esta deficiencia puede contribuir o perpetuar, sin advertirlo, las estrategias de negación de los genocidios

Nobody\u27s people: Colonial subjects, race power and the German state, 1884–1945

Although Germany\u27s colonial project lasted only 30 years, the impact of colonialism on metropolitan institutions continued long after. Germany entered overseas imperialism in 1884 with race-thinking hardly discernible in official policy or public debate. By the time Germany lost its colonies in 1919, however, race-thinking had permeated most of the political parties and had come to define a host of state health initiatives. How do we account for such a dramatic shift in such a short period of time? Studies of the sciences and medicine have begun to answer this question, but a focus on scientific inquiry cannot fully explain how race entered the political and public spheres. This dissertation examines the unintended long-term impact of colonialism on German political culture by looking at the political experiences of African colonial subjects in Germany from 1884 to 1945. When African colonial subjects raveled to the metropole, they raised questions about their legal status that became occasions for public commentary on colonialism, state power, violence, and race. Because they continued to raise the question of the nature of their belonging even after Germany lost its colonies in the First World War, their stories offer us one of the most direct ways of measuring the development of race-thinking in metropolitan state practice before 1933. This study shows that race-thinking became an operative principle in German political culture as a consequence of colonial domination. The Bismarkian state set the stage for the entrée of race-thinking into official policy by failing to define colonial subjects as anything but the pure objects of state will, as “nobody\u27s people.” Colonial administrators on the ground could therefore treat them with great violence, while colonial reformers at home were at pains to explain this violence according to German traditions. A particular “race power” complex emerged from this dynamic of atrocity, scandal and reform, which did not remain neatly in the colonies, but came to influence the programmatic ideas of radical racists when they imagined German expansion eastwards

The Devil in the Details: “Life Force Atrocities” and the Assault on the Family in Times of Conflict

This article introduces the idea of ‘‘life force atrocities’’ and investigates the role they have played in twentieth-century genocides, arguing that genocide is a gen- dered crime intimately associated with institutions of reproduction. Using exam- ples from established cases of genocide, such as the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, Bosnia, and Rwanda, as well as from conflicts not generally under- stood as genocides, such as Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the article outlines two types of life force atrocities that have been common features of these conflicts: inversion rituals and ritual desecrations. Each of these instances of ritualized atrocity targets the family unit within victim groups and betrays a preoccupation with the group’s life force in its physical and symbolic dimensions. Since life force atrocities play on gender roles and hierarchies to tor- ture family members, this article focuses on the relational way in which ge ́no- cidaires instrumentalize gendered violence to destroy the sacred realm of the family as part of the larger effort to destroy a group. The presence of life force atrocities during a conflict can therefore function as an early warning sign of a genocidal logic at some level of the political or military hierarchy. They also offer us insight into the state of mind of the perpetrators who, I argue, see themselves as engaged in a battle with the generative force of the victim group. In some cases, as in Sierra Leone and the DRC, this battle becomes generalized, and soldiers target the life force as such, attempting to destroy (via families) the civilian world in its totality

Nobody\u27s people: Colonial subjects, race power and the German state, 1884–1945

Although Germany\u27s colonial project lasted only 30 years, the impact of colonialism on metropolitan institutions continued long after. Germany entered overseas imperialism in 1884 with race-thinking hardly discernible in official policy or public debate. By the time Germany lost its colonies in 1919, however, race-thinking had permeated most of the political parties and had come to define a host of state health initiatives. How do we account for such a dramatic shift in such a short period of time? Studies of the sciences and medicine have begun to answer this question, but a focus on scientific inquiry cannot fully explain how race entered the political and public spheres. This dissertation examines the unintended long-term impact of colonialism on German political culture by looking at the political experiences of African colonial subjects in Germany from 1884 to 1945. When African colonial subjects raveled to the metropole, they raised questions about their legal status that became occasions for public commentary on colonialism, state power, violence, and race. Because they continued to raise the question of the nature of their belonging even after Germany lost its colonies in the First World War, their stories offer us one of the most direct ways of measuring the development of race-thinking in metropolitan state practice before 1933. This study shows that race-thinking became an operative principle in German political culture as a consequence of colonial domination. The Bismarkian state set the stage for the entrée of race-thinking into official policy by failing to define colonial subjects as anything but the pure objects of state will, as “nobody\u27s people.” Colonial administrators on the ground could therefore treat them with great violence, while colonial reformers at home were at pains to explain this violence according to German traditions. A particular “race power” complex emerged from this dynamic of atrocity, scandal and reform, which did not remain neatly in the colonies, but came to influence the programmatic ideas of radical racists when they imagined German expansion eastwards

El género y el futuro de los estudios sobre el genocidio y la prevención

Este artículo aborda los aportes de la investigación sobre género para la definición del delito de genocidio y para aprehenderlo como proceso histórico. Se afirma que la violencia de género es un elemento central de aquel crimen. Más allá de los debates sobre la violencia y la violación sexual, se argumenta que abordar estas atrocidades en general desde una perspectiva de género brinda herramientas importantes para un sistema de advertencia que debe ser incorporado a la metodología de investigación y a las estrategias de confección de informes de las Naciones Unidas, la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CPI), las organizaciones de derechos humanos y los organismos gubernamentales y servicios de inteligencia. Por medio de un breve análisis de los casos de Darfur y Srebrenica, el artículo demuestra el modo en que las conceptualizaciones que no incorporan la dimensión de género no logran reconocer y describir de manera adecuada los tipos específicos de violencia que son, en general, indicadores del crimen de genocidio. Además, se propone que esta deficiencia puede contribuir o perpetuar, sin advertirlo, las estrategias de negación de los genocidios

Of Prepositions and Propositions: Sharing Experiences and Perspectives on Feminism and the Epistemology of Africanist Collaboration

This article is a response to the growing rift between African and Africanist scholars, written by an African and an Africanist graduate student. Based on our respective experiences, we examine the moments of contention, bad faith and accusation between the two groups and the ways in which these moments are both embedded in, and constitutive of a lingering colonial parochialism based on global asymmetries and power inequalities. The two debates we specifically analyze are the heated exchange between Archie Mafeje and Sally Falk Moore over the history of Anthropology appearing in volumes 2 and 3 of the CODESRIA Bulletin as well as recent installments in the long-standing dispute over FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) research. This analysis transcends the sterile oppositions that arise from these exchanges - insider/outsider, African/Western - by bringing the exchanges together with developments in feminist scholarship as well as some recent work on collaborative knowledge and intellectual cosmopolitanism. The conclusion suggests some of the institutional and intellectual investments necessary to foster an epistemology of Africa that goes beyond the trans-Atlantic divide, while still engaging the material asymmetries that structure trans-Atlantic exchanges. (The Journal of Cultural Studies: 2001 3(1): 1-25