Jinks, Rebecca. “Responding to Genocide”

In this chapter, historian Rebecca Jinks argues that Holocaust mantras such as ‘Never Again’ and ‘Never Forget’ “have helped establish a normative framework for responding to the Holocaust […] and that this framework is now extended to define and delimit how the Western public responds to other genocides” (185). These responses show no real intellectual or ethical engagement with genocide, because they do not ask how genocide can be prevented. To avoid ‘platitudes’, films, books, museums, etc. need to challenge the mainstream representation of genocide. When they refuse stereotypes and reframe knowledge, they can open up questions in their audiences’ minds. One way to do this is to represent perpetrators in a non-stereotypical way.

Jinks, Rebecca. “Responding to Genocide: Attitudes and Platitudes.” Representing Genocide: The Holocaust as a Paradigm? Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.