Introduction

As Lot was escaping from the cities of Sodom and Gomorra, he was warned by angels not to look back. His wife did not abide to this warning and turned into a pillar of salt. She was, in a cautionary interpretation, punished for wanting to look back at what she could not forget. On the other hand, when Art Spiegelman – from Maus – finds out that his father (Vladek) burned his mother’s diaries, he calls him a murderer. The ambiguity of remembrance. Should we try to remember and represent history’s atrocities in hope of understanding them and commemorating the victims but risk emotional paralysis or should we forget, free ourselves from their burden but at the same time destroy a big part of who we are and take away the means of knowing the past both from ourselves and our children? These are crucial questions to anyone wanting to wander into the world of genocide studies. How to frame something, that should have never happened?

Hi, we are a group of polish academics (Mateusz Skrzeczkowski and Radosław Muniak) and this blog is part of a Genocide Studies program/project we are starting with some other colleagues in Warsaw, Poland. With this project we hope to find an answer to these questions. Not through political activism per se but through a study of all manner of genocide representations, framing of the past’s horrors which if treated open-mindly and seriously might change something in future. 

The plan is to initiate a research program concerning genocide from an interdisciplinary and international frame of reference. The aim for now is to gather as much information as possible connected with genocide in all types of mediums (theoretical texts, artistic representations, images, documents, personal experience and memoir etc.), and perspectives (artistic-both practical and theoretical, social-political, economical, psychological, literary etc.) in order to create an archive of themes and concepts.

This blog is the first step in a broader project which we are planing. We see it as a starting point for discussion and information exchange, therefore invite people wanting to help to include there own comments, texts and works (visual, literary or theoretical). Since we have just started this blog (and project), please be patience with us and it.

The blog is divided into categories, which are – in our view – the basis for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of genocide. This form of division will hopefully inable a fluent exchange of information between poeple concerned with the problem of genocide, that brought together in one perspective might be able, to do more good in ‘eradicating genocide’ from our civilisation. This idea might seem utopian and naive but better to be that, then stand still and do nothing when people eradicate one another.

It is our intention, that this blog function as an open platform for any one wanting either to learn or contribute, if not both. So feel free to add and if you have any suggestions, questions or reservations, contact us!

Contact:

Radosław Filip Muniak – rfmuniak@gmail.com

Mateusz Skrzeczkowski – mskrzecz@gmail.com