The Historiographic Perversion

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. Engaging some of the most disturbing responses to the Armenian genocide, Marc Nichanian strikingly reveals the complex role played by law and history in making this and other genocides endure as contentious events. Nichanian's book argues that both law and history fail to contend with the very nature of events for which there is no archive (no documents, no witnesses). Both history and law fail to address the modern reality that events can be—and are now being—perpetrated that __depend__ upon the destruction of the archive, turning monstrous deeds into nonevents. Genocide, this book makes us see, is in one sense the __destruction__ of the archive. It relies on the historiographic perversion. Drawing on the writings of philosophers from late medieval and early modern traditions, including Vijnanabhiksu, Madhava, and Madhusudana Sarasvati, Nicholson shows how influential thinkers portrayed Vedanta philosophy as the ultimate unifier of diverse belief systems. This project paved the way for the work of later Hindu reformers, such as Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and Gandhi, whose teachings promoted the notion that all world religions belong to a single spiritual unity. In his study, Nicholson also critiques the way in which Eurocentric concepts--like monism and dualism, idealism and realism, theism and atheism, and orthodoxy and heterodoxy--have come to dominate modern discourses on Indian philosophy Contents Introduction: The Names and the Archive 1. The Law and the Fact: The 1994 Campaign 2. Between Amputation and Imputation 3. Refutation 4. Testimony: From Document to Monument Conclusion: Shame and Testimony Against History: Gil Anidjar Notes Index