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The Jewish Daily Forward
Dec 30 2011
When History Is Closed for Debate
French Avoid Guilt by Banning Armenian Genocide Denial
By Robert Zaretsky
Published December 30, 2011, issue of January 06, 2012
The spirit of the holiday season has just swept across the French
National Assembly. On December 22, the nation's representatives - or,
more accurately, the handful in attendance - passed a bill that would
criminalize the denial of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in
1915.
It was as much a gift to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who
will surely use it to bolster the great swell of Turkish nationalism
he has been riding, as it was to the French-Armenian community, whose
votes Nicolas Sarkozy's government has been desperately courting.
Though the bill must pass several more hurdles before it becomes law,
there has already been less damage to Franco-Turkish relations - they
hardly could have gotten worse - than to our relation with history.
Historical revisionism has a long history in France; it also has a
different name: negationism. Historian Henry Rousso coined the term
nearly two decades ago in his book `The Vichy Syndrome,' while Alain
Finkielkraut had anticipated it with his essay `The Future of a
Negation.' It was, as well, the preferred term for ancient historian
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who, in his 1993 book, `Assassins of Memory,'
made a simple but critical distinction. Revisionism is what historians
do every day - namely, examine and reconstruct the past in light of
new discoveries or insights. Negationists, on the other hand, simply
deny the existence of certain past events.
Instead of revising the past, they bury it. Since, as Vidal-Naquet
observed, dialogue requires a common ground based on truth, historians
share as much with negationists as firefighters do with arsonists.
Negationism came of age in postwar France as the nation wrestled with
the legacy of Vichy and the Final Solution. With every empirical
advance made by a generation of historians like Robert Paxton and
Michael Marrus that deepened our understanding of France under Vichy,
there appeared the works of `revisionists' like Robert Faurisson or
Maurice Bardèche, who, rather than reinterpreting the past, reinvented
it. Perhaps not coincidentally, both men taught French literature, not
history, thus freeing them from the usual constraints of material
evidence and historical methodology.
Perhaps inevitably, the struggle over the past in France spilled
beyond the academy into the courts. The succession of trials, ranging
from Paul Touvier and René Bousquet to Maurice Papon, all of whom were
accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Occupation,
led to the passage in 2006 of the Gayssot Law, which criminalized the
denial of the Holocaust. It also turned professional historians into
professional trial witnesses. At Papon's trial, in 1997, several
eminent historians, including Paxton, were called to give historical
evidence during the hearings. By the end of the trial, the line
between the `judgment of history' and the actual judgment by a jury
had blurred irreparably, discomfiting both the legal and historical
professions.
One of the few historians who refused to testify was Rousso, who
worries over our age's growing fascination with a `juridical reading
of history.' Such a reading, Rousso claims - and which explains his
refusal to testify at the Papon trial - necessarily undermines the
integrity of history. As he argues in his book `The Haunting Past,'
the historian's presence on the witness stand forces him to speak
ultimately to one thing and one thing only: the culpability of the
defendant. When it comes to reflecting on the complexity of the past,
however, the courts are as intolerant as are the negationists they are
bringing to trial.
The irony is clear: The effort to protect the past from negationists
who seek to destroy it has instead placed it in the embrace of
politicians who, in codifying it, wish to remove it from the realm of
public debate. It is for this reason that several prominent
historians, led by Pierre Nora, have criticized the new law. By
`freezing' this historical event - in other words, removing it from
the realm of professional and public discourse - the law prevents
historians from doing their job. `History is above all else a source
for debate and for the sake of democracy must remain so,' wrote the
historian Christian Delporte in a blog post for Le Monde.
There is no doubt that if Vidal-Naquet were still alive (he died in
2006) - this new law would have outraged him. Born into a Sephardic
Jewish family, as was Nora, Vidal-Naquet signed a petition shortly
before his death that demanded the abrogation of the Gayssot Law.
Seventeen of France's most prominent historians joined him, including
Nora. While France's government is busy playing with history for
political ends, we should recall the concluding words of the petition:
`In a free society, it belongs neither to parliament nor the courts to
define historical truth.'
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history in the Honors College at the
University of Houston. His most recent book is `Albert Camus: Elements
of a Life' (Cornell University Press, 2010).
http://www.forward.com/articles/148751/
Dec 30 2011
When History Is Closed for Debate
French Avoid Guilt by Banning Armenian Genocide Denial
By Robert Zaretsky
Published December 30, 2011, issue of January 06, 2012
The spirit of the holiday season has just swept across the French
National Assembly. On December 22, the nation's representatives - or,
more accurately, the handful in attendance - passed a bill that would
criminalize the denial of the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in
1915.
It was as much a gift to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who
will surely use it to bolster the great swell of Turkish nationalism
he has been riding, as it was to the French-Armenian community, whose
votes Nicolas Sarkozy's government has been desperately courting.
Though the bill must pass several more hurdles before it becomes law,
there has already been less damage to Franco-Turkish relations - they
hardly could have gotten worse - than to our relation with history.
Historical revisionism has a long history in France; it also has a
different name: negationism. Historian Henry Rousso coined the term
nearly two decades ago in his book `The Vichy Syndrome,' while Alain
Finkielkraut had anticipated it with his essay `The Future of a
Negation.' It was, as well, the preferred term for ancient historian
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who, in his 1993 book, `Assassins of Memory,'
made a simple but critical distinction. Revisionism is what historians
do every day - namely, examine and reconstruct the past in light of
new discoveries or insights. Negationists, on the other hand, simply
deny the existence of certain past events.
Instead of revising the past, they bury it. Since, as Vidal-Naquet
observed, dialogue requires a common ground based on truth, historians
share as much with negationists as firefighters do with arsonists.
Negationism came of age in postwar France as the nation wrestled with
the legacy of Vichy and the Final Solution. With every empirical
advance made by a generation of historians like Robert Paxton and
Michael Marrus that deepened our understanding of France under Vichy,
there appeared the works of `revisionists' like Robert Faurisson or
Maurice Bardèche, who, rather than reinterpreting the past, reinvented
it. Perhaps not coincidentally, both men taught French literature, not
history, thus freeing them from the usual constraints of material
evidence and historical methodology.
Perhaps inevitably, the struggle over the past in France spilled
beyond the academy into the courts. The succession of trials, ranging
from Paul Touvier and René Bousquet to Maurice Papon, all of whom were
accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Occupation,
led to the passage in 2006 of the Gayssot Law, which criminalized the
denial of the Holocaust. It also turned professional historians into
professional trial witnesses. At Papon's trial, in 1997, several
eminent historians, including Paxton, were called to give historical
evidence during the hearings. By the end of the trial, the line
between the `judgment of history' and the actual judgment by a jury
had blurred irreparably, discomfiting both the legal and historical
professions.
One of the few historians who refused to testify was Rousso, who
worries over our age's growing fascination with a `juridical reading
of history.' Such a reading, Rousso claims - and which explains his
refusal to testify at the Papon trial - necessarily undermines the
integrity of history. As he argues in his book `The Haunting Past,'
the historian's presence on the witness stand forces him to speak
ultimately to one thing and one thing only: the culpability of the
defendant. When it comes to reflecting on the complexity of the past,
however, the courts are as intolerant as are the negationists they are
bringing to trial.
The irony is clear: The effort to protect the past from negationists
who seek to destroy it has instead placed it in the embrace of
politicians who, in codifying it, wish to remove it from the realm of
public debate. It is for this reason that several prominent
historians, led by Pierre Nora, have criticized the new law. By
`freezing' this historical event - in other words, removing it from
the realm of professional and public discourse - the law prevents
historians from doing their job. `History is above all else a source
for debate and for the sake of democracy must remain so,' wrote the
historian Christian Delporte in a blog post for Le Monde.
There is no doubt that if Vidal-Naquet were still alive (he died in
2006) - this new law would have outraged him. Born into a Sephardic
Jewish family, as was Nora, Vidal-Naquet signed a petition shortly
before his death that demanded the abrogation of the Gayssot Law.
Seventeen of France's most prominent historians joined him, including
Nora. While France's government is busy playing with history for
political ends, we should recall the concluding words of the petition:
`In a free society, it belongs neither to parliament nor the courts to
define historical truth.'
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history in the Honors College at the
University of Houston. His most recent book is `Albert Camus: Elements
of a Life' (Cornell University Press, 2010).
http://www.forward.com/articles/148751/