Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: The Macabresque of Human Violation
Introduction: Taking Performativity Seriously
1. From Collective Violence to Human Violation: Dark Desires in Disorders of Will
Part II: On the "Normality" of Perpetrators: How We Know Them, How They Know Themselves
2. Perpetrators Alone and Together: Analytical Perspectives, Methodological Critiques
3. One Mind, Heart, and Spirit: Reductionist Traps in Psychosocial Theory
4. The Modalities of Desire in Mimetic Rivalry: Sin, Sign, and Symbol
5. Human Development and the Political Subject: The Lacanian Scaffolding in Psychosocial Perspectives
6. Perversity in the Performative: Sadism and Shame in the Macabresque
Part III: Cultural Contexts: Case Studies of Performativity in the Macabresque
7. The Lurid and Ludic in the Chinese Cultural Revolution: Oral Disciplines and Oedipal Aggression in Mao's Re-education Camps
8. Cultural Case Studies in the Macabresque: Variations of Human Violation in the Twentieth Century
The Desert March of Young Turk Predatory Horror
Stalin's Ideological Purgatory
Hitler's Diabolical Laboratory
The Hell of Blood Trauma in the Days of Hutu Power
The Confessional Archive and the Facial Aesthetics of A
The Junta's Neo-Inquisitional Operating Theaters
The Bosnian Shame Camps
Part IV: Politics of the Unreal
9. On the Slippery Tropes of We-ness: Reality and the Unreal in Social Fantasy and Political Ideology
10. The Quest for the Never-Is: Legitimacy-Grounding as Enemy-Making
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Edward Weisband is the Edward S. Diggs Endowed Chair in the Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech. He is the author of ten books, including Turkish Foreign Policy, 1943-1945, Political Culture and the Making of Modern Nation States, Nations and Nationalities, Global Accountabilities, Secrecy and Foreign Policy, and World Politics.

Reviews

"This book offers an important theoretical bridge between the research census that perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities are ordinary people, and recognition that they commit violence of extraordinary cruelty. Contributing a complex psycho-social framework, Weisband adds depth of analysis to the exploration of this conundrum within the study of mass violence."
--Bridget K. Conley, Research Director, World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University
"For many years, the study of perpetrators has been dominated by the 'ordinary men' paradigm. Edward Weisband's book offers us a much-needed alternative. Centered on the notion of performativity, The Macabresque provides an interdisciplinary, multidimensional explanation for the origins of genocide and atrocity crimes that everyone working in the field should read."
--Alexander Hinton, Director, Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
"Edward Weisband has produced a stunning piece of scholarship. In his carefully developed formulation of the disturbing-yet essential-notion of 'the macabresque' he has succeeded in combining an unflinching yet astute mode of historical and empirical analysis with a set of incisive and theoretically expansive formulations. This rigorous study will redefine how we understand the psychical and political reality of genocide, torture, and mass atrocity. Every now
and again one comes across a book that shifts an entire constellation of scholarly thought and produces an irreversible change in how one thinks of human nature. Edward Weisband's The Macabresque is
just such a book."
--Derek Hook, Associate Professor of Psychology, Duquesne University
"Edward Weisband's The Macabresque is a creative and profound interrogation of the contemporary theater of cruelty. Its questions are compelling and its critical thinking is conceptually wide ranging and provocative."
--Michael J. Shapiro, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai'i, Manoa
"With its expansive treatment of the literature and novel insights into the production of desire in theaters and rituals of violation, The Macabresque is an important work for any scholar of mass violence, torture, and armed conflict." - Benjamin Meiches University of Washington-Tacoma