Against the Grain: Critical Reflections on the State and Future of Genocide Scholarship

This article critiques certain trends in genocide studies, including scholarly misuse of Lemkin’s sta- tus and work, retreat from academic activism against genocide, dismissive approaches to victim groups’ political agency, relativist tendencies of the “memory politics” concept and its application, growing institutionalization of the field, the obscuring of genocidal violence against women and girls through the concept of “gendercide,” the focus on dehumanization as a condition of genocide, and the emphasis on early warning. The article also discusses a new genocide denial strategy. In light of this, genocide early warning is largely irrelevant and, far beyond political indifference accounting for the continued prevalence of genocide, the prevalence results because the current global order and many individual societies have been largely formed through genocide and related mass violence and oppression. The article contends that a global reparation process could help rework the current world away from its genocidal foundations and tendencies