SAMPLE PUBLICATIONS
Scenarios of Intractability: Reframing Intractable Conflict and Its Transformation
Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2019
Abstract: For those working toward long-term conflict transformation and atrocity prevention, cases of so-called “intractable conflict” are an enduring source of frustration, continually resisting what seems to be an otherwise useful toolbox of "lessons learnt" and "best practices." Referring to these cases as intractable, however, only serves to naturalize their intractability, rendering it an essential and immutable quality of the conflicts, and thus foreclosing options for engagement and prevention. Moreover, it obscures interventions that may have already emerged from within these conflicts that are transforming the way they play out. This article suggests, instead, to perceive these cases as scenarios of intractability: embodied scripts that shape the speech and actions that seem possible within a given context. Analyzing these conflicts as scenarios allows us to attend to the spoken and unspoken, the discursive and the embodied, ways in which identity-based division manifests in each context. This article explains this concept before outlining some mitigating interventions that have emerged within these scenarios to transform the way these conflicts play out, mitigating the risk factors associated with mass atrocity violence in the process.
Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2019
Abstract: For those working toward long-term conflict transformation and atrocity prevention, cases of so-called “intractable conflict” are an enduring source of frustration, continually resisting what seems to be an otherwise useful toolbox of "lessons learnt" and "best practices." Referring to these cases as intractable, however, only serves to naturalize their intractability, rendering it an essential and immutable quality of the conflicts, and thus foreclosing options for engagement and prevention. Moreover, it obscures interventions that may have already emerged from within these conflicts that are transforming the way they play out. This article suggests, instead, to perceive these cases as scenarios of intractability: embodied scripts that shape the speech and actions that seem possible within a given context. Analyzing these conflicts as scenarios allows us to attend to the spoken and unspoken, the discursive and the embodied, ways in which identity-based division manifests in each context. This article explains this concept before outlining some mitigating interventions that have emerged within these scenarios to transform the way these conflicts play out, mitigating the risk factors associated with mass atrocity violence in the process.
Reading the Traces: Embodied Engagement with the Past at Three Former Nazi Concentration Camps"
Holocaust Studies, February 2019
Abstract: Since German Reunification, the sites of Nazi atrocities found across the landscape of the former East Germany have undergone an array of transformations as curators determine how the sites can best educate visitors about the violence of the Nazi atrocities and the Communist regime that followed. This article will offer a comparative analysis of three former Nazi concentration camps—Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück—to demonstrate the varied choices that site administrators and educators have made in this process. It will focus especially on the performative strategies that have been integrated into these spaces of memory. Whereas Sachsenhausen tends to rely on more traditional forms of knowledge transmission through guided tours and museum exhibitions, Buchenwald utilizes educational strategies that attempt to place the visitor more clearly in the shoes of the victim or the perpetrator in hopes of connecting them with the site. The directors of Ravensbrück, on the other hand, have developed novel educational programs that push visitors to connect with the site, and consequently the history of the violence that took place there, on a personal level through a variety of collective embodied practices. I will argue that practices that encourage visitors to make the space their own through group interaction have the greatest potential for creating a political subject with a commitment to memory of past violence and prevention of future violence.
Holocaust Studies, February 2019
Abstract: Since German Reunification, the sites of Nazi atrocities found across the landscape of the former East Germany have undergone an array of transformations as curators determine how the sites can best educate visitors about the violence of the Nazi atrocities and the Communist regime that followed. This article will offer a comparative analysis of three former Nazi concentration camps—Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück—to demonstrate the varied choices that site administrators and educators have made in this process. It will focus especially on the performative strategies that have been integrated into these spaces of memory. Whereas Sachsenhausen tends to rely on more traditional forms of knowledge transmission through guided tours and museum exhibitions, Buchenwald utilizes educational strategies that attempt to place the visitor more clearly in the shoes of the victim or the perpetrator in hopes of connecting them with the site. The directors of Ravensbrück, on the other hand, have developed novel educational programs that push visitors to connect with the site, and consequently the history of the violence that took place there, on a personal level through a variety of collective embodied practices. I will argue that practices that encourage visitors to make the space their own through group interaction have the greatest potential for creating a political subject with a commitment to memory of past violence and prevention of future violence.
"Remembering to Prevent: The Preventive Capacity of Public Memory"
Genocide Studies and Prevention 11(2), October 2017
Abstract: It is without doubt the case that memory of the past has been and is being used in certain places to justify radical intolerance and unspeakable violence. But for every instance where that is the case, a dozen alternative cases exist where memory creates cohesion, positive change, and a less violent society. This article focuses on the instances where memory does the latter. It first discusses why and how the formation of a public memory culture can be preventive of future violence. Next, it introduces several categories of memory practices, each of which exemplifies the embodied nature of public memory, and each of which demonstrates the capacity for memory to bring people together, rather than tear them apart. This survey of memory practices illustrates an array of successful means for both remembering the past and preventing violence in the future.
Genocide Studies and Prevention 11(2), October 2017
Abstract: It is without doubt the case that memory of the past has been and is being used in certain places to justify radical intolerance and unspeakable violence. But for every instance where that is the case, a dozen alternative cases exist where memory creates cohesion, positive change, and a less violent society. This article focuses on the instances where memory does the latter. It first discusses why and how the formation of a public memory culture can be preventive of future violence. Next, it introduces several categories of memory practices, each of which exemplifies the embodied nature of public memory, and each of which demonstrates the capacity for memory to bring people together, rather than tear them apart. This survey of memory practices illustrates an array of successful means for both remembering the past and preventing violence in the future.
"Acting Across Violence: H.I.J.O.S., Practices of Trans-Action, and Biopoetics in Post-Dictatorship Argentina"
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25(2), April 2016
Abstract: Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in Argentina, H.I.J.O.S., an activist group formed by the children of those disappeared during the military dictatorship of 1976–83, staged public protests across the country. These demonstrations, known as escraches, served to reveal and denounce the perpetrators of past crimes that were still living among them. Their performances filled the city streets, challenging the silence of the public and the state in relation to the past through acts that this article calls co-embodied practices of trans-action. Practices of trans-action traverse and transect space and populations through the movement of bodies across swaths of territory, using their affective power to exemplify Arendtian forms of political action. This article analyzes the work of H.I.J.O.S. as a co-embodied practice of trans-action that served to process past state-sponsored violence, particularly the affective and emotional force of that violence, by providing an opportunity to rewrite what it means to be a normative body in the public sphere. These acts of crossing work to lay new claim to public space by undoing the power of state terror not only to atomize bodies but also to paralyze them. Finally, if Foucault’s biopolitics work to discipline and restrict bodies in various ways, this article uses Argentinean poet Julián Axat’s concept of biopoetics to describe how these acts of crossing space can work to reorient relations of power through “poetic” uses of the body.
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 25(2), April 2016
Abstract: Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s in Argentina, H.I.J.O.S., an activist group formed by the children of those disappeared during the military dictatorship of 1976–83, staged public protests across the country. These demonstrations, known as escraches, served to reveal and denounce the perpetrators of past crimes that were still living among them. Their performances filled the city streets, challenging the silence of the public and the state in relation to the past through acts that this article calls co-embodied practices of trans-action. Practices of trans-action traverse and transect space and populations through the movement of bodies across swaths of territory, using their affective power to exemplify Arendtian forms of political action. This article analyzes the work of H.I.J.O.S. as a co-embodied practice of trans-action that served to process past state-sponsored violence, particularly the affective and emotional force of that violence, by providing an opportunity to rewrite what it means to be a normative body in the public sphere. These acts of crossing work to lay new claim to public space by undoing the power of state terror not only to atomize bodies but also to paralyze them. Finally, if Foucault’s biopolitics work to discipline and restrict bodies in various ways, this article uses Argentinean poet Julián Axat’s concept of biopoetics to describe how these acts of crossing space can work to reorient relations of power through “poetic” uses of the body.
"Performing Prevention: Civil Society, Performance Studies, and the Role of Public Activism in Genocide Prevention" in
Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention Edited by Sheri P. Rosenberg, Tibi Galis, and Alex Zucker Cambridge University Press In the two and a half decades since the end of the Cold War, policy makers have become acutely aware of the extent to which the world today faces mass atrocities. In an effort to prevent the death, destruction, and global chaos wrought by these crimes, the agendas for both national and international policy have grown beyond conflict prevention to encompass atrocity prevention, protection of civilians, transitional justice, and the Responsibility to Protect. Yet, to date, there has been no attempt to address the topic of the prevention of mass atrocities from the theoretical, policy, and practicing standpoints simultaneously. This volume is designed to fill that gap, clarifying and solidifying the present understanding of atrocity prevention. It will serve as an authoritative work on the state of the field. |
"Filling the Absence: The Re-Embodiment of Sites of Mass Atrocity and the Practices They Generate"
Museum and Society 12(2), July 2014
Abstract: Despite the particularities that are present within every instance of genocide or state terror, one thing they all share is that, once the physical violence ends, there are always sites that are left behind, many of which contain material reminders or even concrete evidence of the violations that occurred within their boundaries. By focusing specifically on la Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the largest former concentration camp in Argentina, this article examines these sites as places that allow for a certain set of shared, embodied practices to be performed both by the curators or organizers of the sites, as well as the visitors to the sites. I argue that it is never the spaces themselves, but rather the practices that transpire within these spaces and through the process of transforming the space from a site of atrocity into a site of memory that influence the constructive processing of past violence. They do so through their ability to make people re-encounter and re-activate the past in the present.
Museum and Society 12(2), July 2014
Abstract: Despite the particularities that are present within every instance of genocide or state terror, one thing they all share is that, once the physical violence ends, there are always sites that are left behind, many of which contain material reminders or even concrete evidence of the violations that occurred within their boundaries. By focusing specifically on la Escuela Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), the largest former concentration camp in Argentina, this article examines these sites as places that allow for a certain set of shared, embodied practices to be performed both by the curators or organizers of the sites, as well as the visitors to the sites. I argue that it is never the spaces themselves, but rather the practices that transpire within these spaces and through the process of transforming the space from a site of atrocity into a site of memory that influence the constructive processing of past violence. They do so through their ability to make people re-encounter and re-activate the past in the present.
"Performing a Future (in) Performing a Past: Identity, Cultural Performance, and the Utopian Impulse"
Tourist Studies 14(2), August 2014
Abstract: This article examines three performances of cultural identity that occur or have occurred in three European cities that rely heavily on the tourism industry: Barcelona, Krakow, and Venice. Taking as its starting point the claim of tourism studies scholar John Urry that “social identities emerge … out of particular structures of feeling that bind together three elements—space, time, and memory,” the article analyzes how three cultural performances variously perform sentiments of nationalism, progress, and nostalgia to portray a specific image of cultural identity. In doing so, these performances provide a deep insight into the cultural values of the performers and how they wish their culture to be experienced by visiting outsiders. Furthermore, the article examines how all three of these cultural performances contain within them a Utopian impulse, or a wish to inscribe a new future for the given culture.
Tourist Studies 14(2), August 2014
Abstract: This article examines three performances of cultural identity that occur or have occurred in three European cities that rely heavily on the tourism industry: Barcelona, Krakow, and Venice. Taking as its starting point the claim of tourism studies scholar John Urry that “social identities emerge … out of particular structures of feeling that bind together three elements—space, time, and memory,” the article analyzes how three cultural performances variously perform sentiments of nationalism, progress, and nostalgia to portray a specific image of cultural identity. In doing so, these performances provide a deep insight into the cultural values of the performers and how they wish their culture to be experienced by visiting outsiders. Furthermore, the article examines how all three of these cultural performances contain within them a Utopian impulse, or a wish to inscribe a new future for the given culture.
"The Price of Freedom, the Cost of War: A Walking Tour"
Material Culture 46(2), Fall 2014
Abstract: In 2004, the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. opened its newest exhibit in the permanent collection. The Price of Freedom: Americans at War takes visitors on a 250 year journey through the history of warfare in the United States from the French and Indian Wars of colonial America to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Through the form of a guided walking tour of the exhibition, this essay posits some alternate ways of looking at this display of American history through the lens of warfare. Specifically, this essay examines the material objects present in the curation of the exhibit and analyzes the disparities in the manner in which each individual war is portrayed. Also analyzed is the positioning of the government and American citizens within each war and the near total disappearance of death from the exhibit. This essay ends by articulating an alternative — and potentially utopic — method for reclaiming the exhibition towards envisioning a less bellicose future.
Material Culture 46(2), Fall 2014
Abstract: In 2004, the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. opened its newest exhibit in the permanent collection. The Price of Freedom: Americans at War takes visitors on a 250 year journey through the history of warfare in the United States from the French and Indian Wars of colonial America to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Through the form of a guided walking tour of the exhibition, this essay posits some alternate ways of looking at this display of American history through the lens of warfare. Specifically, this essay examines the material objects present in the curation of the exhibit and analyzes the disparities in the manner in which each individual war is portrayed. Also analyzed is the positioning of the government and American citizens within each war and the near total disappearance of death from the exhibit. This essay ends by articulating an alternative — and potentially utopic — method for reclaiming the exhibition towards envisioning a less bellicose future.
TRANSLATIONS
Reparations for Crimes Against Humanity as Public Policy: Argentina's Relationship with the Past
AIPR's Policy Papers in Prevention Series Written by Andrea Gualde Translated by Kerry Whigham "In the present article I will review the reparatory politics of the Argentinean government in relation to the crimes against humanity of our recent past. To do so I will take the reparatory parameters of international human rights law—both in its regional and universal contexts—as a framework of analysis. I will try to locate within those parameters the politics of memory, truth, and justice, which have been outlined since the restoration of constitutional order in 1983, but which took on a special dimension in recent years since the reopening of the judicial process for crimes committed during the military dictatorship." |
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