The University of Arizona Press
December 7, 2022
Visualizing Genocide examines how creative arts and memory institutions selectively commemorate or often outright ignore stark histories of colonialism. The essays confront outdated narratives and institutional methods by investigating contemporary artistic and scholarly interventions documenting settler colonialisms including land theft, incarceration, intergenerational trauma, and genocide. The authors offer honest critique, but in so doing they give hopeful and concrete strategies for the future.
Below, read an excerpt from Visualizing Genocide:
In this volume, we undertake the difficult task of assessing, from Indigenous viewpoints, how histories of colonialism are commemorated in the creative arts and memory institutions—archives and museums. Our unique approach to these weighty issues avoids celebratory appraisals of Indigenous survival alone by examining closely the tools available to engage with the complexities of our collective histories, however contested. In pursuing the topic of visualizing genocide with our invited authors, we are aware that for some, the claim that genocide occurred under the colonial project of imperialism and expansion may be viewed as an extreme measure. Historian Jeffrey Ostler describes the identification of genocide in American Indian history as “contentious,” arguing for an “open-ended approach to the question of genocide that explores several phases and events” to avoid “quarrels about definitions.” While we agree with Ostler that the violence of the colonial project “varied considerably in different times and places according to the goals of particular colonial projects,” the authors included in this volume contribute their essays from the perspective that genocide is an accurate term to describe the imperialism they document through photographs, exhibits, archives, and art.
Our global reach (including essays from artists and writers originating in not only the United States but also Norway, Canada, Australia, and the Caribbean) attempts to identify central themes and tensions as artists and theorists examine responses to assimilation and extermination efforts. Massacres, disease, removals, abrogated treaties, religious intolerance, theft of land, relocation, the kidnapping and forced education of children, and the subsequent social crises of poverty, poor health, and political marginalization form the ground of discussions. Contributors do not seek an easy remedy for the massive upheavals they document, but rather their essays pull the reader into the specific times, places, and tremendously varied strategies of responses employed in an effort to make these truths available. In doing so, they make the “unknowable” accessible and ready for examination, contemplation, and discourse.
In an era characterized by fragmented knowledge, decontextualized sound bites, and instant access, how do we know with certainty the difference between truth and distortion when contemplating past atrocities? While more scholarly literature documenting historically specific events of genocidal processes is emerging, we employ an American Indian studies approach of a multidisciplinary lens—including art history, anthropology, studio arts, and visual culture. Our analysis contends that it is in the open registers of artistic practice and reinterpretation of archival holdings that facts previously considered “unknowable” can be clearly documented.
A primary premise at play in the chapters that follow is that many, if not most, prior assertions of neutrality in the archival records and historical accounts in museum exhibits are, in fact, biased and selective histories. Archivists Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook argue, “Archivists wield enormous power, loathe as many archivists are to admit this and reluctant as many academics are to acknowledge this.” These authors add, “Archival approaches to making records available (or not) . . . create filters that influence perceptions of the records and thus of the past.” Cultural specificity, author voice, and positionality are key factors in telling historical “knowns,” as are social practices such as storytelling, collective arts making, acknowledgment of land, and imaginative reconstructions of the past in performance, poetry, installation, and two- and three-dimensional contemporary arts.
These active interventions in the historic record are essential contributions to genocidal studies. We posit that the erasure and denial of atrocities in the historic record actually aid selective and often sanitized retellings. According to cultural anthropologist Gregory Stanton, denial is the tenth stage of what constitutes genocide globally. Denial is described as the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide . . . deny that they committed any crimes, blame what happened on the victims . . . During and after genocide, lawyers, diplomats, and others who oppose forceful action often deny that these crimes meet the definition of genocide. They call them euphemisms like “ethnic cleansing” instead. They question whether intent to destroy a group can be proven, ignoring thousands of murders. They overlook deliberate imposition of conditions that destroy part of a group. They claim that only courts can determine whether there has been genocide, demanding “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” when prevention only requires action based on compelling evidence.
