The Social Functions of Memory and the International Politics of Recognition: The Case of the Armenian Genocide

Abstract

Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide is the most persistent case of institutionalized genocide denial in recorded history (Stanton, 2010). Through conducting a multimodal critical discourse analysis based on Foucauldian theories of power and exploring the socio-political dimensions of cultural trauma, memory, and photography, this thesis examines genocide denial in the case of the Armenian Genocide and seeks to understand why the ways in which we choose to remember the past matters. Genocide denial provides a compelling case for identifying how discourses legitimize power, politically, judicially, and globally. By applying a highly theoretical lens, I will consider how history is a highly political project of memory upheld by systems of power, while considering the role of eyewitness narration and documentation. It is in this tension between postmodern conceptualization of the regulatory function of discourse and the existence of historical fact that my thesis situates itself. My research will be informed primarily by Foucauldian (1982, 1995, 2003) theories of power and discourse; the unique role of witness photography in times of atrocity (P. Balakian, 2015; Batchen & Prosser, 2012; Clarke, 1997); and theories of trauma and memory (Alexander, 2004; Halbwachs & Coser, 1992; Herman, 1997; Wertsch & Roediger III, 2008).