In Dark Pasts, Jennifer M. Dixon asks why states deny past atrocities, and when and why they change the stories they tell about them.

In recent decades, states have been called on to acknowledge and apologize for historic wrongs. Some have apologized, while others have silenced, denied, and relativized past crimes. Dark Pasts unravels the complex and fraught processes through which state narratives of past atrocities are constructed, contested, and defended. Focusing on Turkey's narrative of the Armenian Genocide and Japan's narrative of the Nanjing Massacre, Dixon shows that international pressures increase the likelihood of change in states' narratives of their own dark pasts, even as domestic considerations determine their content.

Combining historical richness and analytical rigor, Dark Pasts is a revelatory study of the persistent presence of the past and the politics that shape narratives of state wrongdoing.

About the Author

Jennifer M. Dixon is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Villanova University. She has published articles in Perspectives on Politics, South European Society and Politics, and International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Reviews

Dixon offers valuable insights into how a country addresses its past horrors. This book offers some reassurance to those who fight for change, demonstrating that their efforts can be effective.

* Choice *

Dixon has made an extremely valuable contribution to the growing and vibrant literature on the politics of memory and apology. Dark Pasts deserves to be widely read in the scholarly community and is sure to find use in graduate seminars and advanced undergraduate courses.

* Perspectives on Politics *

The book powerfully demonstrates how Japan and Turkey have walked the tightrope of maintaining "plausibility and legitimacy". Through interviews with diplomats and analysts and the exploration of textbooks, newspapers, and other publications, Dixon distills more than fifty years' worth of official narrative in two states five thousand miles apart into a well-argued, systematic analysis of governments' struggles with uncomfortable truths.

* H-Diplo *

Jennifer Dixon has written a path-breaking book that is a model of scholarship, one rich in both detail and analysis, and beautifully written.

* Genocide Studies International *

The official narratives of Turkey and Japan in regard to their respective 'dark pasts,' like Dixon's book cover, are both deceptively aesthetic on the surface while containing many layers. Dixon unpacks them well.

* The Armenian Weekly *

Jennifer Dixon has made a substantive contribution to the study of state narratives with Dark Pasts.... In this elegant and riveting book, Dixon develops a causal model of narrative change for state denial or apology for atrocities committed against civilians.... Dixon's range of methods...makes her own storytelling in the book emotionally vibrant and thus eminently readable, while also being rigorously supported with empirical evidence.

* Political Psychology *

Dark Pasts will be a reference for studies of memory politics in all parts of the world with troubled pasts. The book's excellence in collecting and analyzing archival and interview data should guide historically informed social science scholarship. The theoretical framework and the findings give scholars of history, memory, human rights, nationalism, and international relations much to think about and debate.

* Nationalities Papers *

Dark Pasts represents an important advancement in the study of atrocities, state memory, and international norms. This book will be of value to scholars, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in human rights and questions of post-conflict justice more generally, as well as Turkey and Japan more specifically.

* Nations and Nationalism *

Dark Pasts is not only a fascinating account of Turkish and Japanese narrative change; it also valuably contributes to scholarship on what makes certain forms of politics possible and impossible in varying contexts... helps us understand not only why states struggle with contrition, but also how international legitimacy seeking tempers nationalist glorification of human rights abuses.

* Journal of Genocide Research *


Awards
Joint winner of Dr. Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies 2019 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9781501730245
Author Jennifer M. Dixon
Format Hardback
Page Count 276
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm