Loss is a fundamental human condition that often leads both individuals and groups to seek redress in the form of violence. But are there possible modes of redress to reckon with loss that might lead to a departure from the violence of collective and individual revenge? This book focuses on the redress of political crime in Germany and Lebanon, extending its analysis to questions of accountability and democratization in the United States and elsewhere. To understand the proposed modes of redress, John Borneman links the way the actors define their injuries to the cultural forms of redress these injuries assume and to the social contexts in which they are open to refiguring. Borneman theorizes modes of accountability, the meaning of "regime change" and the American occupation of Iraq, and the mechanisms of democratic authority in Europe and North America.
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Political Crime and the Memory of Loss
Loss is a fundamental human condition that often leads both individuals and groups to seek redress in the form of violence. But are there possible modes of redress to reckon with loss that might lead to a departure from the violence of collective and individual revenge? This book focuses on the redress of political crime in Germany and Lebanon, extending its analysis to questions of accountability and democratization in the United States and elsewhere. To understand the proposed modes of redress, John Borneman links the way the actors define their injuries to the cultural forms of redress these injuries assume and to the social contexts in which they are open to refiguring. Borneman theorizes modes of accountability, the meaning of "regime change" and the American occupation of Iraq, and the mechanisms of democratic authority in Europe and North America.
Loss is a fundamental human condition that often leads both individuals and groups to seek redress in the form of violence. But are there possible modes of redress to reckon with loss that might lead to a departure from the violence of collective and individual revenge? This book focuses on the redress of political crime in Germany and Lebanon, extending its analysis to questions of accountability and democratization in the United States and elsewhere. To understand the proposed modes of redress, John Borneman links the way the actors define their injuries to the cultural forms of redress these injuries assume and to the social contexts in which they are open to refiguring. Borneman theorizes modes of accountability, the meaning of "regime change" and the American occupation of Iraq, and the mechanisms of democratic authority in Europe and North America.
John Borneman is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His books include Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation and Syrian Episodes: Sons, Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo.
Table of Contents
Preface: Political Crime and the Memory of LossI. Accountability1. Modes of Accountability: Events of Closure, Rites of Repetition2. On Money and the Memory of Loss3. Public Apologies, Dignity, and Performative Redress4. Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing: Listening, Retribution, and Affiliation5. The State of War Crimes following the Israeli-Hezbollah War6. Terror, Compassion, and the Limits of Identification: Counter-Transference and Rites of Commemoration in LebanonII. Regime Change, Occupation, Democratization7. Responsibility after Military Intervention: What is Regime Change? What is Occupation?8. Does the United States want Democratization in Iraq? Anthropological Reflections on the Export of Political Form9. The External Ascription of Defeat and Collective PunishmentIII. An Anthropology of Democratic Authority10. What do Election Rituals Mean? Representation, Sacrifice, and Cynical Reason11. Politics without a Head: Is the Love Parade a New Form of Political Identification? (with Stefan Senders)12. Is the United States Europe's Other? On the Relations of Americans, Europeans, Jews, Arabs, MuslimsNotesReferences
Analytically ambitious, drawing on classic and recent anthropology as well as political science and psychoanalysis. . . . [Borneman] demonstrates how anthropologists can add something to [debates about] some of the important political questions of our time.
Universityat Buffalo, SUNY - Deborah Reed-Danahay
The juxtaposition of the German and Lebanese examples brings a unique perspective, one that is highly relevant in the contemporary world as we seek understanding of Europe's relationship to the Middle East. Borneman provides insights on the ways these societies are working out the residues of war and violence. . . . The notion of 'political crime' is ground-breaking in its attention to not only state-sponsored violence but that aimed toward the state.
