Perpetrator Testimony

עם תום המאה העשרים, שזכתה לכינוי "המאה של הטראומה", היה אפשר לזהות התפתחויות משמעותיות בספרות הפסיכואנליטית על טראומה בהשפעת מגמות שונות בשיח הטראומה הביקורתי ששגשג מחוץ לשדה הקליני. חידושים אלה התאפיינו בניסיון לשכלל את החיבור בין התפיסה הטיפולית ובין הקשריה הפוליטיים ולהביא בחשבון יחסי כוח חברתיים המשפיעים על תהליכים נפשיים ומכוננים אותם. בפרט, החיבור של מושג הטראומה עם מושג העדוּת סייע לכותבות פסיכואנליטיות מהזרם ההתייחסותי להפנות תשומת לב טיפולית לעוולות שלא זכו להכרה פוליטית ולהיבטים חברתיים מוכחשים של סבל ואובדן על רקע דיכוי מתמשך.
המאמר מציג התפתחויות חשובות אלה, ובהמשך מתוארים בו כמה סכנות אתיות ואתגרים העולים מהמפגש בין הפסיכואנליטי לפוליטי, לנוכח הכתיבה הביקורתית על מוסד העדות. קשיים אלה יוצגו על רקע סוגיה סבוכה שזכתה לתשומת לב ביקורתית מעטה יחסית – עדותו של הפוגע וההכרה החברתית בטראומה שלו. נושא זה מעלה הסתייגויות רבות, ובראשן החשש המובן כי הקשבה לעדותו ולסבלו של מי שהפעיל אלימות משמעה פטירתו מאחריות והזנחת התמיכה בקורבנותיו. הבעייתיות תודגם בהקשר של לוחמים ישראלים שנשלחו ונשלחים בשם החברה להפעיל אלימות פוליטית, אשר מייצרת אצל קורבנותיה הפלסטינים טראומה עיקשת ומתמשכת.
הדיון יסייע לזהות פער שהולך ונוצר מחדש בין הכתיבה הביקורתית החוץ-אנליטית לבין השיח הטיפולי: בעוד הראשונה נוטה להתמקד בממד האתי של עדויות הפוגעים ולגנות עיסוק בסבל שלהם, הספרות הקלינית מציעה עמדה לא שיפוטית. עמדה אחרונה זו, שגלומה בה הבטחה לאפשר תהליכי עיבוד ושינוי עמוקים, מעוררת לעיתים אי-נוחות שכן היא אינה מתנה את ההקשבה לפוגע במחויבות מוסרית שלו כלפי הנפגע. בסיום המאמר מודגש הפער בין ההשתהות שמתאפשרת בדל"ת האמות של הקליניקה הטיפולית ובין תהליכים המתאפשרים בפרהסיה, ומוצג כהזמנה לכותבות הפסיכואנליטיות העכשוויות להמשיך ולשקוד על החיבור בין הספֵרות הללו, במטרה לתרום למאמץ הביקורתי ולהתמודדות עם האלימות הפוליטית השבה ומתפרצת בחזרה כפייתית.

In 1946, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss, the longest serving commander of Auschwitz concentration camp, is awaiting trial in a Polish prison. Albert, a young and successful Polish investigation judge, is appointed to interrogate Hoss and get a perfect confession out of him. The encounter between the two men will unveil the frightening routine and banalization of evil that took place in the camp.
By introducing the use of Zyklon B in Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss carried out the most efficient mass killing process ever known, which claimed the lives of approximately 1.1 million people. The film is based on the memoirs Hoss wrote before his execution.

This contribution for the first time looks in a contrasting way at the testimonies of two perpetrators from Morocco and Lebanon. The comparison focuses on a similar kind of confession, namely “remorseful texts” in different political settings. I chose these two texts because contrary to many perpetrators Boukhari and Shaftari both admit their crimes repeatedly and describe their own participation in detail. Whereas in Lebanon several perpetrators from all ideological backgrounds have spoken out, in Morocco it is so far basically only Ahmed Boukhari, a commissar named el-Khulti as well as an anonymous torturer. Legally, in Morocco no amnesty has been granted so that theoretically perpetrators can still be brought to court. Their names are not public but can be found in the files of the Moroccan Truth and Equity Instance of 2004. Victims as well as human rights lawyers state that bringing perpetrators to court is a fruitless endeavor for the time being as no independent judgment can be expected. In the Lebanese case, the existent plead guilty could be attributed to the national reconciliation agreement signed in Ta’if in 1989 which grants perpetrators impunity.

El acoso psicológico en el trabajo se define como toda conducta abusiva (gesto, palabra, comportamiento, actitud) que atenta, por su repetición o sistematización, contra la dignidad o la integridad psíquica o física de una persona, poniendo en peligro su empleo o degradando el ambiente de trabajo.
También llamado mobbing, el acoso psicológico en el trabajo es un concepto que se aplica al ambiente de trabajo para indicar el comportamiento agresivo y amenazador de uno o más miembros de un grupo (el acosador o perpetrador), hacia un individuo (el objetivo o la víctima), aunque, ocasionalmente puede practicarse en grupos. A pesar de que el mobbing es un proceso psicológico que se da entre un sujeto que lo sufre y otro que ejerce conductas de agresión psicológica sobre él, no se trata de un proceso individual ni interpersonal. En el fenómeno del acoso psicológico en el trabajo estamos ante un problema de Salud Ocupacional; un proceso organizacional que tiene la frecuencia e intensidad para ser considerado un problema de Salud Pública.

Through a close reading of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (Harper-Collins, New York, 2009) – a fictional autobiography describing the life of a former officer in the SS who, decades later, tells the story of a crucial part of his life when he was an active member of the security forces of the Third Reich, as well as perpetrators' testimonies from World War II – this paper focuses on five forms of linguistic attack on linking, by means of which the perpetrator turns his/her allegedly testimonial text into a false representation of a coherent discourse that in fact undermines its own validity. This is achieved by the creation of a double language that dissociates between explicit and implicit meaning, actually rewriting factual and emotional history alike. The perfect crime, as Jean-François Lyotard (1989) claimed, does not consist of killing the victim, but rather of obtaining the silence of the witness, the deafness of the judges and the inconsistency of the testimony. If one neutralises the addressor, the addressee and the significance of the testimony, the result is that there is no referent: no crime has been committed. When, in other words, the witness is blind, the judge is deaf and the testimony has lost coherence and meaning, the crime goes unregistered and hence allegedly never happened. This paper focuses on the ways in which the perpetrator 'erases the referent' by silencing her or his 'inner witness' (Amir, 2012) and inner judge, turning the entire testimonial text into a false representation of a coherent discourse that in fact undermines its own validity. This 'erasure', as will be shown, is achieved by the emergence of a double language, one marked by a

In response to recent demands to make use of international criminal justice institutions' archives for social scientific research, this article develops a theoretical approach to international criminal justice called narrative expressivism. Narrative expressivism considers criminal justice as a potent source of information about past crimes – yet also, as a site that impacts on present and future societal understandings of mass violence, promoting a particular structuring of thought. As such, narrative expressivism addresses what kind of knowledge international criminal justice, its institutions and archives, provide the empirical basis for. Theorizing expressivism

Ce chapitre explore les modalités de l’affrontement entre les agents répressifs de la dictature militaire brésilienne (1964-1985), appelés à témoigner devant la Commission Nationale de la Vérité, et leurs membres. Il interroge aussi la valeur donnée à la parole du personnel répressif dans le cadre institutionnel de la commission. Il s’agit donc non seulement d’analyser les propos des témoins, leurs stratégies rhétoriques et mémorielles, mais aussi l’espace que les membres de la CNV leur ont proposé : quel regard est-il possible de porter publiquement sur des récits du passé si discordants avec la vérité historique que la commission se proposait d’établir?

Chapter 14. Andrea Timár engages with literary representations of the experience of perpetrators of dehumanization. Her chapter focuses on perpetrators of dehumanization who do not violate laws of their society (i.e., they are not criminals) but exemplify what Simona Forti, inspired by Hannah Arendt, calls “the normality of evil.” Through the parallel examples of Dezső Kosztolányi’s Anna Édes (1926) and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (1950), Timár first explores a possible clash between criminals and perpetrators of dehumanization, showing literature’s exceptional ability to reveal the gap between ethics and law. Second, she examines novels focalized through perpetrators and the difficult narrative empathy they provoke, arguing that only the critical reading of these novels can make one engage with the potential perpetrator in oneself. As case studies, Timár examines Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), which may potentially turn its reader into an accomplice in the process of dehumanization, and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe (1986), which puts on critical display the dehumanizing potentials of both aesthetic representation and sympathy as imaginative violence. Third, she reads Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones [Les Bienveillantes, 2006], which can make the reader question, through the polyphony of the voice of its protagonist, the notions of narrative voice and readerly empathy, only to reveal that the difficulty involved in empathizing with perpetrator characters lies not so much in the characters’ being perpetrators, but rather in their being literary characters. Eventually, Timár briefly touches upon the problem of the aesthetic and the comic via Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) to ask whether one can avoid some necessarily dehumanizing aspects of humor.

This article examines why Klara Pfoertsch, a communist inmate of of the women's concentration camp Ravensbrueck was convicted to death by French military courts for violence she committed as a function prisoner. Her gender, working class upbringing, criminal conviction for treason, lack of education all conspired to keep in prison long after the high ranking NS and SS men convicted in the Nuremberg trials had been released.

This is the proof version of the index for my book Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account (London: Routledge, 2018).  I am uploading it here to give people an idea of the content of my book.  Please note that this is not the final version so there may be some small errors.

The paper argues that Christian theologies need to reflect upon the perspective of the perpetrators when thinking about the Shoah – otherwise they will unconsciously adopt the perspective od the perpetrators. The perspective of the resistance  against the Nazi regime might be a necessary supplement.

The memory of WWII and the participation of
the Hungarian state and its citizens in killing the
Hungarian Jewish citizens is a contested memory.
Dr. Pető bases the lecture on her recent book
on female perpetrators during WWII in Hungary,
where she interviews families in Budapest whose
members were perpetrating war crimes. How do
such families narrate these stories 70 years after
the event? What is the relationship between the
changing frameworks of memorialization of the
Shoah on the individual level in Hungary? How
is the participation of their families in violent
events remembered in Hungary in comparison with
research on the same topic in Germany and Austria?
How to analyze gendered memory of violence based
on family stories? What are the methodological
challenges of using archival material (police reports,
court testimonies, press material) together with oral
history material about the same event?

Este artículo se propone estudiar algunas aristas de las declaraciones de los perpetradores de genocidio en el cine documental tomando como estudio de caso el genocidio camboyano. Se pensará las características que posee la declaración del victimario a fin de problematizarlo como testimonio; y finalmente se analizarán los documentales desde el recorrido teórico esbozado para pensar el “trabajo de confesión” del perpetrador