Genocide Denialism and the Epistemology of Ignorance

Last week, Melanie Altanian started a post in parts last week, on her new book, The Epistemic Injustice of Genocide Denialism (Routledge 2024), which is open access. Here she focuses on genocide denialism, prolonged trauma, and retraumatization.

Cover of the book by Melanie Altanian

Denialism, prolonged trauma, and re-traumatization

When confronted with the topic of Turkish genocide denial, the respondents of Kalayjian et al.’s (1996) study expressed a range of negative emotions, including resentment, hatred, and anger/rage, which are appropriate responses to “a perception that the moral order has been violated, with no recompense having followed this disruption” (Miller and Miller 1987, 198). Denial also presents an insult to painful memories, thus constituting a further humiliation that is likely to re-traumatize survivors and force them to silence themselves regarding their experiences.

Survivors may also wilfully suppress their memories, as it would bring back all the pain and terror of their experiences. This may go along with constrictive behaviour in an attempt to create some sense of safety and to control their pervasive fear. However, by avoiding situations that remind them of the past trauma, or initiatives that involve future planning and risks, they “deprive themselves of those new opportunities for successful coping that might mitigate the effect of the traumatic experience” (Herman 2015 [1992], 59). This includes isolating themselves or remaining silent about their traumatic experience.

Importantly, survivors’ feelings of fear, distrust, and isolation are compounded when they are in an environment of incomprehension or hostility towards them and their testimonies. This creates a vicious cycle, as the shattered self “can be rebuilt only as it was built initially, in connection with others” (Herman 2015 [1992], 74). Rendering traumatic experiences intelligible to oneself and relevant others are essential steps towards resolution and closure.

These considerations have cross-generational significance. As a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors who escaped to France, Janine Altounian (1999, 339) describes from a psychoanalytic perspective the “two-fold collective trauma” that is transmitted to descendants and which they must deal with:

[F]irst, the extermination of the descendants’ families and the annihilation of their ancestors’ native land and cultural referents; and second, the dispersion of their parents, escapees stripped of their territorial and linguistic roots and of any narcissistic foundation for their psychic survival, throughout the Western world, in countries where the denials and silences of Realpolitik hold sway.

Altounian draws on her own experience receiving and processing this transmission. The task, she says, requires being “equipped with the psychic and linguistic apparatus necessary” (Altounian 2017, 70). Borrowing from the language of the host culture, the testimony of the descendant thus may benefit from an institutional context that lends authority to that language; “the privilege of his current status […] allows him to live in a time and under political conditions that tolerate his testimony” (73). This marks the role of the descendant as a witness-translator.

We can, then, see how an institutional context of genocide denialism inhibits practices required for successful trauma recovery, thus prolonging trauma across generations, encouraging ongoing constrictive behaviour, and entrenching a range of negative affects. 

As I argue in the book, genocide denialism presents an epistemology of ignorance that weaponizes genocide survivors and their descendants’ dependency on available shared concepts, meanings, and other epistemic resources they can authoritatively draw on to render their testimonies tolerated, credible, intelligible, and thereby effective. The aim is to terrorize them further and to sustain domination.

Melanie Altanian is assistant professor for epistemology and theory of science at the University of Freiburg. Her research focuses on issues in social and political epistemology, moral philosophy, and social philosophy.