Calls to preserve ‘genocide’ meaning can erase its political dimensions

Evidence

Henry Huttenbach (1988:297) argues that if “genocide” is used “simply for the emotional effect or to make a political point,” the “original” or “explicit” meaning of the term will be “lost” or “eroded.” Such statements seem to construe violence as revolving exclusively around acts of killing, thereby drawing attention away from the political underpinnings and effects of debates regarding genocide. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 280

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the tension between etymological purism and conceptual power recurs in debates over almost every charged political term.

Related

• Strict term-protection views erase genocide’s political functions (similarity 0.93)
• Genocide scholars actively shape the politics of the violence they study. (similarity 0.82)
• Labels like ‘genocide’ actively shape perceptions and memory of violent events (similarity 0.82)
• Genocide scholars resist widening the term to include killings lacking clear group-destruction intent. (similarity 0.80)
• Narrow genocide definitions silence victims who need that rhetoric most (similarity 0.80)
• Genocide discourse functions as convertible symbolic capital in politics (similarity 0.80)
• Lemkin coined ‘genocide’ from Greek and Latin roots in 1944 (similarity 0.79)
• The boundary defining which violence counts as genocide is itself racialized (similarity 0.79)
• Genocide was coined by Lemkin to name an old practice given modern form (similarity 0.78)
• Control over genocide’s definition regulates who can legitimately invoke the term (similarity 0.78)
• Genocide charges mobilize transnational audiences that human-rights rhetoric cannot (similarity 0.78)
• Research on genocide contradicts ordinary beliefs about evil’s origins. (similarity 0.78)
• Dismissing genocide accusations as rhetorical serves dominant racial interests (similarity 0.78)