ES 289
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON GENOCIDE AND VIOLENCE
Winter 2008 Thursdays 2 pm -4:50 pm.
SSB 253
Professor Pal Ahluwalia
Office hours (SSB 232): Wednesdays 9-10, Thursdays 10-12
Office phone: 858 822-0651
E-mail: pahluwal@ucsd.edu
COURSE OUTLINE
This course explores the phenomenon of mass killings, political violence and genocide
throughout the world - especially in the twentieth century and into the new millennium. It
will explore the definitional problems associated with the notion of genocide; examine
what constitutes genocide; how genocide is rationalised and allowed to be carried out,
and what ends genocide. An examination of the factors, and intricacies of political
violence will be central to our understanding of the phenomenon. This will be carried out
within the context of the search for an understanding of human morality and immorality.
It will consider the impact of socialization and cultural mores in creating perpetrators and
bystanders to genocide and political violence in our world. The Holocaust and the
promise never to let it happen again will be considered in detail as a platform for
understanding the complex issues of genocide and of human morality and immorality.
Course Requirements:
Seminar Participation: Active engagement with the weekly readings and participation
in seminar discussion is crucial (20% of grade).
Class Presentations: Every student will be responsible for at least one class presentation
based on weekly readings, designed to provoke and facilitate discussion. (10% of grade).
Critical Reading Commentaries: You will be responsible to provide written commentaries in
the form of 1-2 page critical reflections on the weekly readings which will be shared with all
members of the seminar. We will discuss these details during the first class session. The
commentaries should be analytical rather than descriptive, critically engaging the week's readings
rather than summarizing them. They are meant both to encourage careful reflection prior to our
group meeting and to be generative for seminar discussion (20% of grade).
Seminar Paper: A final research paper is due at the end of the seminar. The paper should be
about 5000 words. (50% of course grade).
Seminar Outline and Reading list
Week 1: Organisation and Introductory Week (January 10)
Week 2: The Politics of Commitment (January 17)
Schmitt, Carl (1996), The Concept of the Political, (tranlated by George Schwab),
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Week 3: The Politics of the Uncommitted (January 24)
Agamben, Giorgio (1998), Homo Sacer: Soveriegn Power and Bare Life (Trans. Danial
Heller-Roazen) Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
Week 4: Society Must be Defended (January 31)
Foucault, Michel (2003), “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the College de
France, 1975-6, (Trans. David Macey) Picador, New York.
Week 5: Necropolitics (February 7)
Mbembe, Achille “Necropolitics”, Public Culture, Volume 15, Number 1 (Winter
2003).
Week 6 On Violence (February 14)
H. Arendt, On Violence, pp. 3- 87
Johan Degenaar, "The Concept of Violence", 1990. In Political Violence and the Struggle
in South Africa, Chabani Mangani and Andre du Toit, eds., pp. 70-86.
Andre du Toit, "Discourses on Political Violence", 1990 (above), pp. 87-130.
Robert Edgerton,1992. Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony ,
especially chapters 1, 6, 8.
Sanctions for Evil: Sources of Social Destructiveness. 1971. Edited by the Wright
Institute, Berkeley, Ca.
Week 7 Genocide -- the Holocaust (February 21)
H. Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil, chaters 1-6, 8 ("The Duties of a
Law-Abiding Citizen") , chapters 14 and 15
Mark Levene, “Why is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?”, Journal of
World History, 11, 2, 2000, pp. 305-336.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, 1996. From Hitler's Willing Executioners, chapters 1-6, pp.
27-202 and chapters 15-16, pp. 375-461.
Ervin Staub, 1989. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group
Violence, chapters 5 -11, pp. 67-169.
Week 8 Genocide -- the European Origins of African Genocide (February 28)
Sven Lindqvist, 1996. From, "'Exterminate All the Brutes'"; One Man's Odyssey into the
Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide, pp. 36-69
Liisa Malkki, 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory and National Cosmology, pp. 1152, pp. 259-297.
Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, (Oxford: James Currey, 2001).
Week 9 Political Violence (March 6)
Allan Feldman, 1991. Formations of Violence, pp. 1-84.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, 1995. "Who's the Killer? Popular Justice and Human Rights in
a South African Squatter Camp " Social Justice 22(3): 143-164.
Week 10 'Everyday Violence ' -- the Routinization of Violence (March 13)
M. Taussig, 1991. "Terror as Usual", chapter 2, The Nervous System. N.Y.:Routledge
Carol Cohn, 1987. "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals".
SIGNS 12(4): 687-718.
N.Scheper-Hughes, 1992. "Everyday Violence”, chapter 6, Death without Weeping.