Genocide Denial as Testimonial Oppression

ABSTRACT

This article offers an argument of genocide denial as an injustice perpetrated not only against direct victims and survivors of genocide, but also against future members of the victim group. In particular, I argue that in cases of persistent and systematic denial, i.e. denialism, it perpetrates an epistemic injustice against them: testimonial oppression. First, I offer an account of testimonial oppression and introduce Kristie Dotson’s notion of testimonial smothering as one form of testimonial oppression, a mechanism of coerced silencing particularly pertinent to genocide denialism. Secondly, I turn to the epistemology of genocide denialism and, using the example of Turkey’s denialism of the Armenian genocide, show how it presents what Linda Martín Alcoff calls a substantive practice of ignorance. Thirdly, I apply these considerations to individual practices of genocide denial and analyse the particular characteristics of testimony on genocide, the speaker vulnerabilities involved and the conditions under which hearers will reliably fail to meet the dependencies of a speaker testifying to genocide. Finally, I explore the harms that testimonial oppression perpetrates on members of the victim group, insofar as it systematically deprives them of epistemic recognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Genocide denial
• testimonial oppression
• substantive ignorance
• silencing
• epistemic recognition

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the feedback received on earlier versions of this article from participants at the workshop ‘Epistemic Injustice in the Aftermath of Collective Wrongdoing’ (University of Bern, December 2019), as well as the Covid lockdown-induced virtual work-in-progress meetings with colleagues, in particular, Stephanie Deig, Tanja Rechnitzer, and Kathrin von Allmen. I am especially grateful for the detailed written comments and suggestions by Gaile Pohlhaus, Nadja El Kassar and Deborah Mühlebach, a then anonymous reviewer. This article is based on my doctoral research, which was supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Doc.CH Career Grant, Project Number 175317.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See e.g. Altanian (2017) and Altanian (2019) for earlier versions of the argument.

2. Referring to the scholarly consensus that oppression comes out of unjust social and political institutions. (Cudd 2006, 20).

3. This condition is likely owed to Cudd’s account of social groups as ‘a collection of persons who share (or would share under similar circumstances) a set of social constraints on action’ (2006, 44), which fits both voluntary and nonvoluntary social groups. According to Cudd, ‘[o]ne of the important differences between voluntary and nonvoluntary social groups is that one need not recognize that one is a member of a particular nonvoluntary social group to be a member. One simply needs objectively to face the constraints that other members face, whether or not one recognizes them as patterned constraints that one shares.’ (Ibid., 45) Hence one can belong to a social group nonvoluntarily, regardless of whether one recognizes said oppressive harms, and whether a social group exists is determined primarily by external conditions that are objectively oppressive.

4. Dotson considers testimonial oppressions as practices of silencing of which she identifies two forms: testimonial quieting and testimonial smothering. While in testimonial smothering, speakers are coerced to silence themselves due to circumstances brought about by socially unjust background conditions, testimonial quieting refers to the failure of an audience to identify a speaker as a knower due to ‘controlling images’ (false, negative stereotypes or prejudices) whereby a specific social identity is rendered epistemically disadvantaged or inferior. This resembles Fricker’s (2007, 30–41) central case of discriminatory, systematic testimonial injustice. Both forms are relevant to the analysis of genocide denialism, though testimonial smothering enables me to highlight the complexity of the circumstances brought about by genocide denialism, which render potential hearers testimonially incompetent in various ways, including possession of negative epistemic identity prejudice.

5. For the purpose of this article, I will not provide a detailed positive account of what such testimonial competence and the respective duties and responsibilities of hearers entail. The primary focus is rather on the background conditions of pervasive ignorance that likely cultivate testimonial incompetence and the harms that resultant silencing brings about for potential testifiers.

6. Note that these are examples of denialism in the aftermath of the genocide, as well as during and after Turkish nation state building. For a more detailed and succinct historical discussion of the Armenian genocide and the genocidal ideology that sought to legitimize it, see Oranli, Forthcoming. This also makes evident the historical continuation of said portrayal of Armenians from prior to after the genocide.

7. Website of Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). 2020. ‘The unofficial translation of the message of H.E. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the then Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey, on the events of 1915 (23 April 2014).’ Accessed 1 September 2020. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/turkish-prime-minister-mr_-recep-tayyip-erdo%C4%9Fan-published-a-message-on-the-events-of-1915_-23-april-2014.en.mfa

8. Website of the MFA. 2020. ‘The Events of 1915 and the Turkish-Armenian Controversy over History: An Overview.’ Accessed 1 September 2020. http://www.mfa.gov.tr/the-events-of-1915-and-the-turkish-armenian-controversy-over-history_-an-overview.en.mfa

9. Note that these encounters serve to illustrate a mechanism of testimonial failure I wish to highlight. My aim is not to thereby argue that Armenians also encounter testimonial smothering within the context of Germany, where these particular encounters took place (though they still present instances of silencing).

10. I refer to ‘Turks’ as socially dominant in the context of Turkey, in which my analysis of testimonial oppression is embedded. That being said, depending on the context of the encounter (including existing power relations) and the persistency of genocide denial, it might be harmful in other ways than constitute testimonial oppression.

11. Cassie Herbert (2019) makes a similar point in the context of the #Metoo movement, arguing that it was ‘centrally and powerfully about survivors issuing truth-claims about first-personal experiences of sexual violation’ (18), hence reports, rather than a movement of accusations. Accusations are speech acts that aim to hold someone accountable for their wrongdoing, which would require naming the perpetrator and seeking some form of sanction for his norm violation. As such, they are perpetrator rather than victim-survivor centred. Reports, on the other hand, are an ‘invitation to trust, both in terms of trusting that the content of the account is true and in terms of trusting in the speaker themself in terms of their first-personal experience of that propositional content’ (Ibid.). I thank Gaile Pohlhaus for bringing Herbert’s superb article to my attention.

12. In one of her many valuable comments on my article, Gaile Pohlhaus has related this to Wittgensteinian language games in an enlightening way: The sense of the testimony is in part dictated by the rules of the game – if you are not participating in the same language game, you will not make sense to one another. Against this background, in contexts of oppression, one can be coercively co-opted into a language game one was not intending to play: In the case of detailing one’s family background, to receive this information as an accusation distorts the information and so prevents the sense of that information from circulating as intended.

13. It is subject to further inquiry whether hearers, in light of this, are failing morally or epistemically, or one in virtue of the other when engaging in such practices of silencing.

14. However, the subject matter of genocide takes on a distinct role in the former victim group’s self-understanding, such that its misrecognition is inherently connected to the misrecognition of the group itself. This is because genocide has crucial explanatory value and relevance for the former victim group in terms of shared historical experience and collective memory, as well as for understanding present-day experiences of oppression (see e.g. Altanian 2019, 156–159).

15. ‘Dr. Taner Akçam on the Recent Decision of the Turkish Government’, The Armenian Weekly, 24 June 2020. https://armenianweekly.com/2020/06/24/statement-of-dr-taner-akcam-on-the-recent-decision-of-turkish-government/

16. ‘Turkish Parliament Committee Bans Mentioning of Armenian Genocide in Parliament’, The Armenian Weekly, 24 July 2017. https://armenianweekly.com/2017/07/24/turkish-parliament-committee-bans-mentioning-of-armenian-genocide-in-parliament/

17. For a detailed discussion of the role of intellectual self-trust for dealing with epistemic injustice, see El Kassar (2020); El Kassar, Forthcoming.

18. I engage in a more thorough analysis of how testimonial and hermeneutical injustice are inherently connected in my upcoming book, The Epistemic Injustice of Genocide Denialism (Manuscript in preparation).

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on her doctoral research, which was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) under Grant number [175317].

Notes on contributors

Melanie Altanian

Melanie Altanian is current recipient of a one-year IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the UCD School of Philosophy and member of the Horizon 2020 project ‘Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action’ (PERITIA). She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Bern, where she graduated with a dissertation on the epistemic injustice of genocide denialism. Besides working on her book manuscript, she has published articles on the topic in English and German for edited volumes with Brill and Springer.