How Representations Shape the Aftermath: Reviewing the Syrian Case through Four Lenses

The way violent events are defined and conceptualized has tremendous implications for the ways in which people deal with their effects on both the individual and the societal level. Based on Daniel Feierstein’s explorations concerning the implications of the four main ways in which the violent past in Argentina is described – as a war, state terrorism, crimes against humanity or genocide – this paper applies these narratives as analytical concepts to another case: The Syrian dictatorship.

Even though this case of state violence is ongoing, it is no less significant how the violent events which unfolded particularly since 2011 are conceptualized. On the contrary, it might be even more important to provide an analytical view of the advantages and disadvantages of reproducing any of these contested concepts in academia.

Similar to what Feierstein proposes in his recent work Memories and Representations of Terror: Working Through Genocide, this paper therefore analyzes the implications of these four different perspectives − war, state terrorism, crimes against humanity or genocide − on different areas of the Syrian case. Through each lens, we will explore:

1. How the victims are defined
2. How the perpetrators are defined
3. The meaning assigned to the state’s actions and the causality implied
4. The types of analogies and comparisons each label gives rise to
5. How the social consequences of terror are evaluated
6. The (social and legal) actions proposed or assumed to be necessary for healing and/or to prevent a repetition of the terror
7. Intergenerational transmission (including mourning) and how each form of representation helps us to own the events or not

Therewith, this paper provides an initial exploration of how these representations might eventually shape an aftermath in the Syrian case.