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Grounded in extensive oral historical, archival, and ethnographic research in the aftermaths of the Bosnian (1992-95), Indonesian (1965-66), and Rwandan (1994) genocides, this book investigates the symbolic meanings associated with spectacular forms of torture, murder, and mutilation that perpetrators devise amid genocides to punish their intended victims. Often framed as "senseless" acts of cruelty in popular culture, the stories told by the survivors, eyewitnesses, and perpetrators examined in this book instead reveal the perpetrators' intentional use of symbolic violence to torture and kill their victims, and to undermine victim communities' social vitality in long-lasting ways.
Erin Jessee and Annie Pohlman explore four inter-related forms of symbolic violence: the destruction of the victim groups' cultural heritage; atrocities against children and elders; forms of humiliation, assault, and mutilation that target victims in gendered and sexualized ways; and atrocities intended to undermine the spiritual vitality of living and deceased victims. They argue that these forms of extra-lethal violence intentionally inflict social death by drawing on culturally specific symbols and tropes. The cases examined in this book show how perpetrators undermine or destroy the biological elements of victim groups through torture and killings, alongside the constituent parts of the victim group's social vitality: the historical, cultural, and social bonds that give meaning to and sustain communities.
