The myth of Europe defines whose violence counts as morally culpable.

Evidence

Let me explain: Tony Judt powerfully argues that the idea of Europe stands as a convenient suppressor of collective memories of the widespread collaboration with Nazi crimes in East and West alike, as well as of mass brutalities and civil cruelties for which all states were directly or indirectly responsible. His account has nothing to say, however, about violence perpetrated in this period by Europeans outside Europe—in colonial Africa, say, or in the Middle East. No mention is made even of Algeria, which was, after all, an internal department of France. I stress that my comment here is not moralistic but descriptive. It has to do with how the conceptual boundaries of moral and legal solidarity are actually traced. I do not object to Judt’s leaving colonial violence out of his discussion. I merely point to what he thinks is important. I indicate that his discussion of collective culpability is limited in precisely the way that the “myth of Europe” defines the extent of its own solidarity. “The myth of Europe” does not simply suppress the collective memories of violence within Europe; the resurrection of those experiences as memories strengthens that myth. The moral failure displayed in these memories is considered particularly shameful because Europeans try to cover up their past cruelties in Europe to other Europeans instead of confronting that fact fully. The Turkish assault against Europe and the more recent European brutalization of non-Europeans have quite a different salience within the world of international law. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 783

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and to arguments about whose suffering is memorialized versus erased in genealogy of the modern nation-state.