Writing Her Diary

WE'VE been periodically asking all semester why we study genocide. The academic taxonomy, generally pursued by the folks we've been reading, can't help but return to notions of blame and conscience. Rather than solely categorizing for the sake of some satisfactory definition, or striving towards some illusory preventative use, genocide studies contains a recurring preoccupation with guilt.

THIS was certainly my experience in whatever minimal scholastic exposure to genocide I encountered in middle school and high school. The important thing was to understand that the victims of genocide deserve my pity, and that the perpetrators deserve my abhorrence. It's a self-congratulatory assuaging of conscience that Swedish pop group Brainbombs attack in their 1990 single, "Anne Frank".

IN one of a few scarce interviews, two of the band members, brothers Dan and Peter Råberg, respond to the accusation that the lyrics to "Anne Frank" betray some kinship with Nazism:

Dan Råberg: "I think there have existed lots of Anne Franks, but her in particular I don't believe in. I reckon a Jewish dad made it all up in order to make a shitload of money."

Peter Råberg: "Just think about it, anyone who ever went to school was plagued by that book, that's why you hate Anne Frank. I find the novel rather tedious."

Dan Råberg: "She was a little whore who fucked Nazis."

THE obsession with the pitiful nobility of Anne Frank (writing in her diary) preached in school fosters resentment, as any prescriptive emotional agenda will. Using the ostensibly knowledge-directed study of a subject to perpetuate a deluded conscience is bad enough, but, as D. Råberg points out, there's money changing hands here as well. Suffering is commodified: those who would like to indulge their morbid fetishistic curiosities without diminishing their virtuous self-images can buy Anne Frank. Like the song says, she's a "dead whore," bought posthumously to fondle my conscience.

IF there is a good reason to study genocide, it is obscured by fawning over victims and demonizing agents. Primo Levi's "Gray Zone" is a commendable alternative to the simplistic dualism which Brainbombs and I encountered in our respective primary educations. The use of that kind of a study is firstly to debunk the dualistic approach, but what does it move towards of itself?

AS Quinton said recently in class, the notion that the study of genocide can be useful in preventing future genocide is unrealistic. Disregarding that as a possible reason, maybe the study of genocide can provide a somehow relatively accurate understanding, for the sake of itself, of the general mechanisms of massively focused human action.

BUT genocide storytelling also has quite a dramatic allure, the quality that allowed Anne Frank's diary to sell so well. There may be motives at play in the study of genocide that are decidedly not noble. Turning again to pop music for wisdom, here is William Bennett of Whitehouse, writing in 2001:

"[Those] who prefer art that 'raises questions' are certainly as disgusting as those rubbered dilettantes who recognize that the answers are what you masturbate over."