Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide investigates interconnections between space and violence throughout the twentieth century, and how such connections informed collective memory. The interdisciplinary volume shows how entangled notions of time and space amplified by memory narratives led to continuities of violence across different conflicts creating “terrortimes” and “terrorscapes” in their wake. The volume examines such continuities of violence with the help of an analytical framework built around different themes. Its first part, spatial and temporal continuities of violence, looks at contested spaces and ideas of national, ethnic, or religious homogeneity that are often at the heart of prolonged conflicts. The second part, on states and actors, addresses the role of states as enablers of violence, asymmetric power dynamics, and the connection between imperialism and genocide in Africa. Imagination and emotion―the focus of the third part―explores utopian visions and their limits that instigate or hinder, and the mobilization of emotion through propaganda. Finally, the fourth part shows how the recollection of the past sometimes triggers new terrortimes. Departing from an understanding of violence limited to certain areas and time frames, this volume describes continuities of violence as overlapping fabrics woven together from notions of space, time, and memory.

Volker Benkert is an assistant professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the impact of sudden regime change on biographies after both totalitarian regimes in twentieth-century Germany. He is the author of The Last Children of Socialism: Biographies of East Germans Born Around 1970, and the editor of two volumes on generational history and German-American relations since 1945. His current research focuses on memory of the Nazi past in German film, which despite great strides to acknowledge the horrors of the Holocaust still includes highly apologetic and redemptive narrative traits.

Michael Mayer is an assistant professor at the Political Academy in Tutzing, Germany. His research focuses mainly on the Holocaust in Vichy France, asylum policy in West Germany, and German foreign policy after 1949. An editor of several volumes, Mayer is also the author of States as Perpetrators: Ministerial Bureaucracy and Anti-Jewish Policy in National Socialist Germany and Vichy France. Most recently he edited The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by Nazi Germany, 1933–1945, Volume 5.