Deportations and Discursive Displacements

Abstract

This article begins a conversation about the consequences of deploying the Holocaust as a metaphor for specific instances of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It explores the rhetorical linkage between the war in Kosovo and the Holocaust, an analogy that looms large in discourse in the United States. I use the term “discursive displacement” to describe the process of signifying events in Kosovo with the metaphor of the Holocaust. This metaphor can both enlarge and constrain the production of knowledge. The use of metaphors is fundamental to the process of making meanings. Nevertheless, by disrupting the “transfer” of meanings from the Holocaust to Kosovo, my aim is to expand our understanding of the persistence and specificity of ethnic cleansing and genocide in our own time.