Publish and Flourish is an annual event that recognizes the accomplishments of our faculty and staff who have published within the past year. In connection with the Office of Research and the University Bookstore, The UW Tacoma Library celebrates the achievements of our campus community. In lieu of our campus closure, we will be highlighting these publications online through our blog. The UW Tacoma library purchases all faculty and staff publications to make them available to the UW community. This week we are highlighting:
The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide
Author: Benjamin Meiches
Department: Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs, division of School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
“For a term coined just seventy-five years ago, genocide has become a remarkably potent idea. But has it transformed from a truly novel vision for international justice into a conservative, even inaccessible term? The Politics of Annihilation traces how the concept of genocide came to acquire such significance on the global political stage. In doing so, it reveals how the concept has been politically contested and refashioned over time. It explores how these shifts implicitly impact what forms of mass violence are considered genocide and what forms are not.
Benjamin Meiches argues that the limited conception of genocide, often rigidly understood as mass killing rooted in ethno-religious identity, has created legal and political institutions that do not adequately respond to the diversity of mass violence. In his insistence on the concept’s complexity, he does not undermine the need for clear condemnations of such violence. But neither does he allow genocide to become a static or timeless notion. Meiches argues that the discourse on genocide has implicitly excluded many forms of violence from popular attention including cases ranging from contemporary Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the legacies of colonial politics in Haiti, Canada, and elsewhere, to the effects of climate change on small island nations.
By mapping the multiplicity of forces that entangle the concept in larger assemblages of power, The Politics of Annihilation gives us a new understanding of how the language of genocide impacts contemporary political life, especially as a means of protesting the social conditions that produce mass violence.” – University of Minnesota Press
Reviews:
“Concepts are always political—and perhaps never more so than when they classify and rank the evils that can befall human beings. Benjamin Meiches’s extraordinary genealogy of the notion of genocide since its coinage during World War II is especially welcome, blending empirical cases, historical perspectives, and theoretical considerations in an ideal fashion. Emphasizing the lability of the concept before it was fixed in our time, for better or worse, Meiches shows how talk of genocide has allowed for moralizing in a violent world, even as it obstructs other perspectives that the future will require.”—Samuel Moyn, Yale Law School (University of Minnesota Press)
“…Meiches’ book will motivate its readers to consider the ways in which we contribute to the maintenance of a hegemonic understanding of genocide. Even those of us who seek to challenge its hegemony may find that we inadvertently and unconsciously reinforce elements of its dominance simply by approaching the subject of genocide through culturally embedded biases that we are often aware of and, much to our vexation, have unintentionally internalized. In this regard, Meiches has ably contributed to the field of (critical) genocide studies in ways that extend beyond the singular uniqueness of his text. Indeed, it is fair to expect that The Politics of Annihilation will inspire and inform the works of scholars yet to come. “—Excerpt from Book Review: The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide by Jeffrey Bachman
Locate the Ebook in the UW Libraries catalog here
Learn more about the author here
The UW Tacoma Library is very proud of your accomplishments, Benjamin Meiches. Congratulations!
Congratulations Ben! Amazing reviews!
Looks like an important study, bravo! These are such hard issues to face.