Law of denial

Law’s claim of mastery over past political violence is frequently undermined by reversals of that relationship of mastery, so that the violence of the law, and especially its symbolic violence, becomes easily incorporated into longues durées of political violence, rather than mastering them, settling them, or providing closure. Doing justice to the past, therefore, requires a political and theoretical attunement to the ways in which law, in purportedly attempting to address past political violence, inscribes itself into contemporary contexts of violence. While this may be limited to an analysis of how law is an effect of and affects the political, theoretically this attunement can be further refined by means of a critique of dynamics that are internal to law itself and that have to do with how law understands its own historicity, as well as its relationship to history and historiography. This article aims to pursue such a critique, taking as its immediate focus the ECHR case of Perinçek v Switzerland, with occasional forays into debates around the criminalisation of Armenian genocide denialism in France. The Perinçek case concerned Switzerland's criminalisation of the denial of the Armenian genocide, and concluded in 2015 after producing two judgments, first by the Second Chamber, and then by the Grand Chamber of the ECHR. However, although they both found for the applicant, the two benches had very different lines of reasoning, and notably different conceptions regarding the relationship between law and history. I proceed by tracing the shifting status of 'history' and 'historians' in these two judgments, and paying attention to the deferrals, disclaimers and ellipses that structure law's relation to history. This close reading offers the opportunity for a critical reappraisal of the relationship between law, denial and violence: I propose that the symbolic violence of the law operative in memory laws is a product of that which remains unresolved in law's understanding of historicity (including its own), its self-understanding vis-à-vis the task of historiography, and its inability to respond to historical violence without inscribing itself into a history of violence, a process regarding which it remains in denial

Beyond national narratives? : centenary histories, the First World War and the Armenian Genocide

In April 2015 the centenary of the Armenian Genocide was commemorated. Just like the First World War centenary, this anniversary has provoked a flurry of academic and public interest in what remains a highly contested history. This article assesses the state of the current historiography on the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. It focuses on the possibilities for moving beyond the national narratives which continue to dominate the field, in particular through connecting the case of the Armenian Genocide to what has been termed a ‘transnational turn’ in the writing of the history of the First World War

The Documentation of the World War I Armenian massacres in the proceedings of the Turkish military tribunal.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from : International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, 1991

The Role of the special organisation in the Armenian Genocide during the first World War.

Donated by Klaus KreiserReprinted from : Panikos Panayı (ed.). Minorities in Wartime-- Oxford: Berg, 1993

The Documentation of the World War I Armenian massacres in the proceedings of the Turkish military tribunal.

Donated by Klaus Kreise

The Agency of “Triggering Mechanisms” as a Factor in the Organization of the Genocide Against the Armenians of Kayseri District

Using the notion of a ‘‘triggering mechanism’’ as a guidepost, this article details the sequence of events precipitated by the accidental explosion of a bomb a young Armenian was tinkering with in anticipation of a new round of massacres he hoped to obviate. The ensuing massive and indiscriminate arrests throughout the length and breadth of the district, the attendant use of a variety of methods of torture, and the eventual eradication of the bulk of the district’s Armenian population through courts-martial, followed by serial executions through hanging, deportation, and massacre, are depicted and analyzed to demonstrate the exterminatory thrust of the ensemble of the counter-active governmental measures. The study concludes that the accidental explosion of the bomb was a welcome opportunity for the perpetrators, directed by the local leaders of the monolithic political party, the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), to proceed with their pre-existing germinal plan of regional genocide

The Prefiguration of Some Aspects of the Holocaust in the Armenian Genocide (Revisiting the Comparative Perspective)

The field of genocide studies has been marked by a comparative tendency, while at the same time scholarship on the Holocaust has tended to focus on its singularity; the Armenian Genocide has often been treated as representing a ‘‘dress rehearsal’’ for the Holocaust. This article examines the parallels and commonalities, as well as the differences, between the two events, with a view to drawing them into a comparative perspective. More specifically, four major factors (vulnerability of the victim group, degradation of victims, war as opportunity, and fear of retaliation on the part of perpetrators) and three subsidiary factors (methods of extermination, disregard of economic factors, and terminological deflection) are examined with respect to both the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide