ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: GENOCIDE RHETORICS IN US POPULAR CULTURE: ANXIETY, AGENCY, AND AUTHORITY Theresa A. Donofrio, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Shawn J. Parry-Giles Department of Communication Genocide is a notoriously difficult problem to define, represent, resolve, and remember. Popular cultural texts addressing genocide often showcase considerable inconsistency in their attempts to engage each of these four arenas. In part, the textual vacillations contained within such popular cultural treatments of genocide reflect extent tensions in scholarly discussions of atrocity. Both popular and scholarly discourses on genocide demonstrate a substantive ambivalence over the relationships among state authority, public agency, and genocidal violence. Genocide Rhetorics in US Popular Culture departs from existing work on atrocity concerned with the unstable relationships among state power, public power, and violence. Instead, this study centers on the competing ways popular cultural texts constitute state authority and public agency within their attempts to define, represent, resolve, and remember genocide. Because these texts commonly contain contradictory messages about each of these four topics, this study also looks at how these texts manage the palpable anxiety that arises from such textual incongruences. In the process, it spotlights genocidal discourse contained in two museums (the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.) and one documentary (Daniel Goldhagen’s Worse Than War), and is informed by the literature in rhetoric, critical/cultural studies, media studies, memory studies, as well as Holocaust and genocide studies. These texts distinctively manage the anxiety created by inconsistent assessments of state authority and public agency, working to sublimate, exacerbate, or recognize these tensions. Ultimately, the texts converge in validating state power on matters of genocide. Despite paying lip service to popular power, all three of the cases centralize the nation- state or empowered political actors as critical to genocide intervention or prevention. In spite of such shortcomings, this study concludes that the anxiety residing within these texts is productive in so far as it imparts messages about audience accountability and prompts critical reflection on issues of state power, public agency, and genocidal violence. GENOCIDE RHETORICS IN US POPULAR CULTURE: ANXIETY, AGENCY, AND AUTHORITY by Theresa A. Donofrio Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor Shawn J. Parry-Giles, Chair Professor Linda Aldoory Professor Kristy Maddux Professor Trevor Parry-Giles Professor Linda Steiner ©Copyright by Theresa A. Donofrio 2013 ii For Ross iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Before I began my work on my dissertation project, I often entertained a romantic notion of the solitary writer at her desk, penning drafts in isolation during the early morning hours or editing into the night. Of course, such a mental picture renders invisible the communities of support that make a project like this possible. That support has come from numerous sources over the years. The Eastern Communication Association and the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California provided financial support for this project. The Eastern Communication Association provided funding in the form of a Ph.D. Centennial Scholarship. The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences made possible a month’s residence in Los Angeles through a Visiting Ph.D. Candidate Fellowship. The Visiting Ph.D. Candidate Fellowship, which was part of the Dornsife College’s genocide resistance research cluster, facilitated my study of the Museum of Tolerance. Chapter Three could not have been completed without their generosity. On the opposite coast, numerous individuals at the University of Maryland supported this project. My position with the Honors Humanities program afforded me the flexibility to complete my work and was a welcome source of intellectual stimulation. I have learned much about balancing scholarship, teaching, and service from Valérie Orlando and Dana Carluccio, and I was grateful to have exceptional colleagues including Abram Fox, Shanna Smith, and Sarah Hamilton Kimmet. These individuals made the office environment enjoyable, and I appreciated their perspectives on the writing process. iv In the Department of Communication, I am honored to have had the chance to work alongside such gifted scholars and wonderful people as Tim Barney, Lindsey Fox, Elizabeth Gardner, Ben Krueger, Tiffany Lewis, Sean Luechtefeld, Yoav Magid, Jade Olson, and Alyssa Samek. Special thanks go out to Elizabeth, Jade, and Thomas McCloskey for their willingness to read long parts of this dissertation and provide feedback. Countless others have listened to me talk through parts of this project and for their time, energy, and advice I am grateful. Of course, I owe many thanks to the faculty in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland and to my dissertation committee. Linda Aldoory, Kristy Maddux, Trevor Parry-Giles, and Linda Steiner generously gave their time to reading and reviewing my work. These scholars have sharpened my critical sensibilities and have been invaluable mentors. Additionally, I consider it a gift to have had the opportunity to study under brilliant scholars such as Mari Boor Tonn, James Klumpp, and Robert Gaines. The many lessons I have learned from these individuals fed my curiosity and provided a strong foundation for the next stages of my academic career. Special thanks are reserved for my advisor, Shawn J. Parry-Giles. I am a better writer, scholar, and researcher because of her tutelage. She has given countless hours to reading multiple drafts of this project, talking through obstacles in argument development, and providing encouragement during times of doubt. Her faith in her advisees’ potential and commitment to their intellectual development inspires me to become a better educator. The best way I can conceive of saying “thank you” is to pay it all forward as I continue my teaching and research. v Finally, much love and many thanks go out to my family. My parents, Sharon and Joseph Donofrio, and sister, Pam Donofrio, tolerated an absent daughter/sibling as I spent more time than I would care to admit during trips home off writing at a coffeehouse. Nevertheless, they were constant sources of love and support. My new parents, Susan and Stanley Katz, encouraged me during stressful parts of the process and, along with Lauren and John Madera, sent many kind words my way. To all of them, thank you. Without a doubt, Ross Katz has nearly achieved sainthood for his selflessness throughout our relationship. I am most grateful for the love and nourishment he provides my body, mind, and soul. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 1. Tensions Surrounding Definition, Representation, Resolution, and Remembrance in Holocaust and Genocide Studies ......................................................................................82 2. Proximity, Distance, and Authority in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Worse Than War 177 3. The Glorification of State Authority and the Problematic Politics of Security within the Museum of Tolerance ......................................................................................................274 4. Rhetorical Intimation and the Specter of the Exnominated within the USHMM’s Genocide Cessation Discourse ........................................................................................375 Afterword .........................................................................................................................482 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................495 1 INTRODUCTION: The Rhetoricity of Genocide Popular culture and academic texts on genocide often begin with a story of rhetorical invention. This story foregrounds Raphael Lemkin, the Polish jurist credited with coining the word, “genocide.”1 As Power recounts the story, Lemkin, a student of languages, had long been interested in the history of mass slaughter. Upon hearing of the Armenian genocide and questioning the legality of that atrocity, Lemkin learned there was no international law condemning genocide. He was skeptical of a logic that criminalized piracy as an international crime but left no legal scaffolding for the international community to justify intervention when a nation was eliminating its own people. Dissatisfied with this lacuna amid the rise of Nazi power in the 1930s and 1940s, Lemkin combined the Greek word for race (genos) with the Latin word for killing (cide) to create the term “genocide.” After World War II, he exerted considerable effort into ensuring the term was used during the Nuremberg Trials. Disappointed with the results, Lemkin then turned his attention to the United Nations, beginning an intensive lobbying campaign to criminalize genocide through international law.2 The end product of this labor was the creation of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,