Ontological (In)Security Encounters and the Epistemic Violence of Genocide Denial

While existing scholarship highlights the importance of collective identity as a driver for genocide denial by collective actors such as states, such analysis typically focuses on the ontological needs of the collective Self without taking into consideration its significant Other(s). This article argues for a postcolonial understanding of genocide denial as an epistemically violent ontological (in)security encounter between interconnected actors. Observing ontological (in)security encounters between epistemic subjects reveals different power relations between the Self and the Other at different stages of genocide, which shape the trajectories of denial. A preparatory stage of genocide might reveal a practice of epistemic violence with the purpose to create the Other as a separate, inferior epistemic subject and normalize a relation of domination of the Self over the Other, while a post-genocide context might signal a less uneven, nevertheless antagonistic relationship of co-dependence between two epistemic authorities. In situations of denial of historical genocides, otherness can also serve a source of mutual ontological security where a relationship of coexistence, or co-constitutiveness, of the Self and the Other becomes desirable. The main contribution of this article is offering a new interpretative framework for understanding the dynamics and trajectories of genocide denial and interrogating how it might be diminished or aggravated, in and through interactions between ontological security-driven needs by the communities involved. Denial is not merely a coping mechanism, but a vehicle of genocide with immense productive power that creates, discredits or erases subjectivities of political actors to not only normalize the relations of domination but also fulfil ontological needs of collective actors even after that relation of domination is transformed.