This essay accounts for this dual function of “genocide” as simultaneously a vehicle of state power and resource to challenge it by situating it in the long history of permanent security rather than in a whiggish story of civilizational progress. Synonymous with European empire, the foundation of the European state and global capitalism, permanent security is sovereignty’s conceit that reserves the right to “shock the conscience of mankind” in the name of self-preservation. Whether “genocide” serves or contests this conceit is the question.
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