Introduction: Emotions and Mass Atrocity

TY - CHAP

T1 - Introduction

T2 - Emotions and Mass Atrocity

AU - Brudholm, Thomas

AU - Lang, Johannes

PY - 2018/1/1

Y1 - 2018/1/1

N2 - “The energy that actually shapes the world,” George Orwell wrote as German bombs rained down on London in 1941, “springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war.” The same year, across the British Channel, the influential French historian Lucian Febvre urged fellow historians to pay closer attention to emotions. Emotions, he warned, “will tomorrow have finally made our universe into a stinking pit of corpses.” Febvre was convinced that those who wished to understand political upheavals like Nazism or mass atrocities like the Holocaust would have to think carefully about the emotions involved. That is what this book sets out to do. Mass atrocity is an umbrella term. It refers to those types of political violence that violate international law and shock the so-called conscience of humanity. This includes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide: intentional, excessive, illegal violence against an alleged enemy. As a concept, “mass atrocity” evokes at least two very different images. One is the image of the more-or-less spontaneous massacre: those brief episodes of excessive violence, perpetrated by overexcited soldiers in the “fog of war.” This is mass atrocity as war crime. The other image that comes to mind has little in common with the emotionally charged massacre. This second image is that of full-blown genocide: a long-term, systematic policy of total annihilation - industrialized, bureaucratized, state-run murder, most hauntingly symbolized by the smokestacks at Auschwitz. Which of these two images of mass atrocity do we have in mind when we invoke the concept? Our answer is bound to affect how we think about the role of emotion. Let us look at two examples. Consider, first, the massacre that occurred in My Lai during the Vietnam War. In 1968, over the course of four hours, a company of American soldiers destroyed an entire village, killing between four and five hundred unarmed women, children, and old men. In the weeks and months leading up to the massacre, the company had suffered heavy casualties from landmines and booby traps, and the young soldiers were feeling increasingly frustrated, angry, and afraid. All the while, the enemy remained elusive.

AB - “The energy that actually shapes the world,” George Orwell wrote as German bombs rained down on London in 1941, “springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war.” The same year, across the British Channel, the influential French historian Lucian Febvre urged fellow historians to pay closer attention to emotions. Emotions, he warned, “will tomorrow have finally made our universe into a stinking pit of corpses.” Febvre was convinced that those who wished to understand political upheavals like Nazism or mass atrocities like the Holocaust would have to think carefully about the emotions involved. That is what this book sets out to do. Mass atrocity is an umbrella term. It refers to those types of political violence that violate international law and shock the so-called conscience of humanity. This includes war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide: intentional, excessive, illegal violence against an alleged enemy. As a concept, “mass atrocity” evokes at least two very different images. One is the image of the more-or-less spontaneous massacre: those brief episodes of excessive violence, perpetrated by overexcited soldiers in the “fog of war.” This is mass atrocity as war crime. The other image that comes to mind has little in common with the emotionally charged massacre. This second image is that of full-blown genocide: a long-term, systematic policy of total annihilation - industrialized, bureaucratized, state-run murder, most hauntingly symbolized by the smokestacks at Auschwitz. Which of these two images of mass atrocity do we have in mind when we invoke the concept? Our answer is bound to affect how we think about the role of emotion. Let us look at two examples. Consider, first, the massacre that occurred in My Lai during the Vietnam War. In 1968, over the course of four hours, a company of American soldiers destroyed an entire village, killing between four and five hundred unarmed women, children, and old men. In the weeks and months leading up to the massacre, the company had suffered heavy casualties from landmines and booby traps, and the young soldiers were feeling increasingly frustrated, angry, and afraid. All the while, the enemy remained elusive.

U2 - 10.1017/9781316563281.001

DO - 10.1017/9781316563281.001

M3 - Book chapter

SP - 1

EP - 20

BT - Emotions and Mass Atrocity

A2 - Brudholm, Thomas

A2 - Lang, Johannes

PB - Cambridge University Press

CY - Cambridge University Press

ER -