"Hate in the Past Tense: Understanding the Origins of Armenian Genocide Denial as a Problem of Contemporary Reconciliation"

Keith David Watenpaugh
Thursday, April 14
4:00 p.m.
Room 710 Social Science Building

Dr. Watenpaugh will explore how aspects of Armenian Genocide denial first emerged around a discrete historical moment, in particular international humanitarian relief efforts on behalf of Armenian Genocide survivors in the early interwar period. Thinking about denial in this fashion creates a space in which to reflect critically about how history as both a discipline and practice operates in the spheres of power and public opinion, especially across political and cultural divides.



Understanding genocide denial in the early interwar period is more than just a step in correcting or confronting a mistake in the historical record, but rather constitutes a form of social history where the very crisis that caused denial brings into relief, to borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, competing "regimes of truth" that are both a product of and central referent of ideological and religious doxa.
The added benefit of understanding Armenian Genocide denial at its earlier moments of articulation, especially where it intersects with the emerging humanitarian régime of the interwar period as a novel, though not unprecedented, style of historicism, is recognizing it as a manifestation of an ideology and a manufactured and reactive defense. This is not to say that the narratives of denial and narratives of acknowledgement are, due to their shared metahistorical implications equal in truth (or lack thereof) rather, each becomes more readily explained as a complex and understandable response to identifiable counter narratives and their underlying ideology.
In the end, seeing denial as less a reflection of a kind of unyielding and unchanging essential societal psychosis than a concerted act that has a contextual and historically bound basis suggest as well a possible path to reconciliation.
Professor Watenpaugh will also present "Hate in the Past Tense" in an abbreviated format at 7:00 p.m. at the St. Sahag Armenian Church 203 North Howell Street, St. Paul.
Co-Sponsored by: European Studies Consortium, Department of History, Human Rights Program, Department of German, Scandinavian & Dutch, Cultural Studies & Comparitive Literature, and the Department of French and Italian.
Related Programs
CHGS Reading Discussion Group
"Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide"
by Richard G. Hovannisian
Facilitated by Keith David Watenpaugh
Thursday, April 14
12:00 p.m.
Room 201A, Wilson Library
Reservations are required and can be made via email at CHGS@umn.edu Please put RDG in the subject line and include your name, phone and email address in the body of the message, or phone at 612-624-0256.
Chapters available on line by visiting the CHGS Reading Discussion Group Blog.
"Finding the Lost: The League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Paradoxes of Modern Humanitarianism"
Keith David Watenpaugh
Friday, April 15
3:30p.m.
Room 1210 Heller Hall

CHGS Reading Discussion Group Rescheduled

The third meeting of the Reading Discussion Group, initially scheduled for March 22nd, has been postponed until Thursday, April 14th. The discussion will be led by Dr. Keith David Watenpaugh, historian and Associate Professor of Modern Islam, Human Rights and Peace who teaches in the Religious Studies program at UC-Davis. Dr. Watenpaugh will also present a lecture, "Hate in the Past Tense: Understanding Armenian Genocide Denial's Origins as a Problem of Contemporary Reconciliation" on campus that evening.

We will be discussing chapters 10, 11 and 12 of Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, edited by Richard G. Hovannisian. The excerpts are available on-line on the CHGS Reading Discussion blog.

The group will meet on Thursday, April 14th at 12pm, Room 201A in Wilson Library. Space is limited, and reservations are required. If you are interested in attending, please send an email to chgs@umn.edu with your name, email address and phone number (please put RDG in the subject line), or call 612-624-0256.

Armenian genocide gave rise to modern humanitarian movement, UC Davis historian argues

CHGS is hosting Keith David Watenpaugh on April 14 as part of our "Alternative Narratives or Denial?" lectures, more information to be released soon.

UC Davis News
2-17-2011

One of the 20th century's most infamous atrocities, the Armenian genocide, also should be remembered for fostering the modern humanitarian movement, a UC Davis historian argues in a paper recently published in the American Historical Review.

Establishing a defining characteristic of modern humanitarianism, people at the time "began to reject the idea that suffering was natural or normal and concluded that you could stop human suffering, that we had the intellectual tools, the social reforms, the science and medicine to do it," said Keith David Watenpaugh, an associate professor who teaches in the religious studies program. "It was just generating the international will to do so.

"This was the first time a major international body, in this case the League of Nations, intervened on behalf of a large population of refugees and genocide survivors, to try to help them. Many Americans were involved in this effort. And it was also a major failure."
Watenpaugh's paper, "The League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920-1927," was published in the December edition of the American Historical Review, the official publication of the American Historical Association.
Between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, much of which later became Turkey, died as a consequence of the genocide. Many were killed during forced marches into the desert or starved to death without food or water.
A specialist in modern Islam and human rights, Watenpaugh researched League of Nations intake surveys that recorded the histories of some 2,000 Armenian girls, boys and young women who, he wrote, "were rescued -- or, more often, rescued themselves -- from Arab, Kurdish and Turkish households into which they had been taken."
At the outset of the genocide, men and older boys were rounded up and executed. Many of the survivors were women and children, who often were sold or given away by their captors to become "agricultural workers or domestic servants, servile concubines, unconsenting wives, and involuntary mothers," Watenpaugh writes.
The League of Nations' belated rescue efforts recovered few of an estimated 90,000 survivors, Watenpaugh said. The mission was handicapped by efforts to portray the refugees as symbols of a much larger conflict.
"The Armenian women and children were non-Muslims being held by Muslims," he explained. "So it was portrayed as an example of a basic conflict between Islam and the West. This kind of politicization of refugee problems often does more harm than good."
Turks interpreted this portrayal as an attack on their national honor and religion and refused to help the League of Nations rescue survivors.
"The Armenians weren't victims of a religion, rather, their enslavement had less to do with religion than traditional social practices," Watenpaugh said.
Moreover, it is important to remember, he added, "that it was a modern phenomenon -- genocide -- that created the conditions under which these women and children could be victimized."
Watenpaugh said that he hopes his research will foster reconciliation by creating a better understanding of a shared past of trauma and violence in the region including Turkey, where the government still insists the genocide never happened.
Work like this can help "modern Turks come to terms with the fact that the genocide of the Armenians is part of their past as well," he said.
"No longer are the Armenians merely the hated 'other,' as they had been taught in school. Perhaps Grandma was an Armenian who had been taken. They may have absolutely loved and adored their grandmother and she's Armenian."
The article as it appears UC Davis News.