Modern genocide undermines linear narratives of progress and democracy

Evidence

Holocaust; he argues that they fail to interrogate the way that the Shoah or Holocaust reveals the violent underpinnings of the desire for order and control that lies at the heart of modern society and its thirst for order and control (see also Bauman, 1990). While Bauman is certainly correct, the question for me is less one of whether the Holocaust is modern than it is the status of it and other genocides during the past half century as a key locus for debating metanarratives of modernity. As the killings in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, and elsewhere marked the century’s close, genocide provided a crucial arena for questioning linear narratives of progress, modernity, democracy, and the “rule of law” versus the politics of force. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 254 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Late-century genocides became the arena for questioning narratives of progress — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 254; Nazi and Stalinist genocide expressed rather than betrayed modernity’s spirit — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 270; Genocide is inherent to modernity, not an exception to it — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 407 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Late-century genocides became the arena for questioning narratives of progress #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 254