The Historiographic Perversion

Marc Nichanian provides an important qualification to the Holocaust discourse. He dismantles cliches and commonplaces with aplomb and startling pertinence and, in the process, he makes significant proposals for revising our thought about extreme events. -- Hayden White, professor of historical studies, emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz

Genocide is a matter of law. It is also a matter of history. Engaging some of the most disturbing responses to the Armenian genocide, Marc Nichanian strikingly reveals the complex role played by law and history in making this and other genocides endure as contentious events. Nichanian's book argues that both law and history fail to contend with the very nature of events for which there is no archive (no documents, no witnesses). Both history and law fail to address the modern reality that events can be--and are now being--perpetrated that depend upon the destruction of the archive, turning monstrous deeds into nonevents. Genocide, this book makes us see, is in one sense the destruction of the archive. It relies on the historiographic perversion.