‘Towards a Critique of the Representation of the Perpetrator’

American Comparative Literature Association, Annual Conference, March 18-20, Harvard University

Seminar Organized by

Marta Marín-Dòmine, Wilfrid Laurier University, Centre for Memory and Testimony Studies

Colman Hogan, Ryerson University, Centre for Memory and Testimony Studies
mmarin@wlu.ca; colman.hogan@ryerson.ca

The objective of the seminar is to explore the evolution of the representation of the perpetrator of mass atrocities in 20^th and 21^st century textual and visual works, fictional and non-fictional, and to identify a set of theoretical concerns pertaining to a critical reading of the figure.

In recent years, a significant body of scholarship has taken up the ethical question of whether we should – and if we should, how we can – engage with the perpetrators’ perspective of atrocity. This is particularly salient in the fields of memory studies and trauma studies, where testimonies and documents produced by perpetrators constitute a large part of the historical archive, and where writers, filmmakers, artists, and museum displays increasingly make use of the works and accounts of perpetrators to challenge and disrupt the ways in which we approach catastrophic events.

This question has seemingly become more salient in light of the recent vogue for perpetrator fictions and documentaries, most notably Les bienveillantes by Jonathan Littell, and The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer and Duch, le maître des forges de l’enfer by Rithy Panh. Such representations – and their moral burden – have generated a diversity of conflicting ethical and aesthetic responses, many of which interrogate the question what historical, ethical or aesthetic truth can fictional and/or non-fictional perpetrator testimony claim to represent?

The seminar departs from the debatable hypothesis that the 21^st century has witnessed a turn in the representation of the perpetrator that, aside from delving into his “ordinariness”, aims at promoting an identification with the reader/viewer – as if he were like us and we like him. We invite presentations that elaborate on this hypothesis, whether to expand, criticize or nuance it, from any theoretical framework that takes into account the dialectic of ethics and aesthetics.

Furthermore, and against this broad starting point, we invite participants to discuss any of the following questions from a comparative point of view:

• Would it be possible to establish a genealogy or genealogies of perpetrator representations in literature, film and the arts? How would they compare?
• What can perpetrator representations tell us about the historical specificities and/or developments of the societies in which it they have been produced?
• Can a dialectic of perpetrator and victim (the strategy of choice for perpetrators) be sustained in light of the contention that the position of the perpetrator is the result of a moral choice while that of the victim is the consequence of a political action?
• Is the perpetrator really the “other side” of the violent event, as recent works have suggested? What becomes of the victims in such representations, and of our responsibility to them?
• How have representations of the perpetrator in literary, visual and artistic works influenced the creation of pedagogical tools, employed for example in museum exhibits, and other public materials?

Friday, March 18, 2016 (10:30am – 12:15pm)

Schöne Zeiten in Auschwitz

Christophe Busch, Kazerne Dossin – University of Amsterdam

Representations of Perpetrators of Mass Atrocities Committed in the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Gerd Hankel, Hamburg Institute for Social Research

The Ambivalent Grotesque: Tournier’s The Ogre and the Malign Inversion of Evil

Yasaman Naraghi, University of Washington

The Voices of Perpetrators

Sue Vice, University of Sheffield, UK

Saturday, March 19, 2016 (10:30am – 12:15pm)

Picturing the Perpetrator

         Paul Lowe, University of the Arts London

Between Victims and Perpetrators, Approaching the Gray Zone

         Mesnard Philippe, University of Clermont-Ferrand 2 – UBP

Åsne Seierstad’s One of Us: Perpetrator and Victim in the Construction of National Innocence

         Ellen Rees , University of Oslo

The I-Narrator and His Foil: Identifying with the Holocaust Perpetrator

         Gregor Rehmer, Universität Hamburg

Sunday, March 20, 2016 (10:30am – 12:15pm)

A Cambodian Eichmann? Visions of Khmer Rouge Perpetrators in the Global Context

Stephanie Benzaquen-Gautier, Erasmus University Rotterdam

The Things We Bury: Confronting Atrocity in Tim O’Brien’s My Lai Writings

         Iain Bernhoft, Boston University

Memory, Commemoration and the Politics of Representation in Post-Genocide Cambodia

         Khatharya Um, University of California, Berkeley

Thoughtlessness and Skandala: The Trial of Duch

         Benjamin Waterman, University of Waterloo