English
Polish
Rafał Lemkin and the General History of Genocide
Jakub Muchowski
jakub.muchowski@uj.edu.pl Bioassistant professor at the Faculty of History of the Jagiellonian University, secretary of the editorial office of the journal “Historyka. Methodological Studies”. He was a visiting scholar at the Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia (2011). He is a member of the [Lab]orans Research Group, the Center for Transnational Literary Research, the Center for Research on Memory Cultures, and the International Network for Theory of History. He deals with the theory of historical writing, intellectual history, Holocaust and genocide research, Polish cultures of memory, and the history of work. Author of The Policy of Historical Writing (2015) and History of the Shoah (2006).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1193-6966
Jagiellonian University
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 18 (2022), pages: 462-472
Publication date: 2023-03-11
Abstract
This article discusses Rafał Lemkin’s historical statements through the prism of the category of universal history. Lemkin is the author of an unfinished book which was to present the history of mass violence on all continents from antiquity to the recent times. He also wrote numerous commentaries, scattered across various works, where he compared past and contemporary violence using the concept of genocide. These statements are connected and ordered by the concept of universal history, which refers to the esteemed tradition of practicing historiography that began to develop in the 16th century. Driven by the idea of universalism, that approach based on the belief that there was only one history shared by all humankind. That universal history includes only the phenomena that affected the present shape of the world, has a center (Europe), can judge the past, and, last but not least, is expressed in the form of a coherent comprehensive story, the sense of which is progress. The category of universal history makes it possible to ask Lemkin’s writings new questions, to supplement our knowledge about his intellectual biography and his definition of the concept of genocide by bringing up questions such as relations between Europe and non-European countries, the idea of progress, the definition of humankind, and the genesis of international law.
Keywords
Rafał Lemkin, genocide, universal history, the idea of progress, universalism, history of international law, eurocentrism
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