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Cycles of genocide, stories of denial : Atom Egoyan's Ararat

journal contribution
posted on 2009-08-01, 00:00 authored by Donna-Lee FriezeDonna-Lee Frieze
This article focuses on Atom Egoyan's Ararat and explores how, through a convoluted narrative structure, Egoyan grapples with denial of the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of those denials for present generations—both Turkish and Armenian—illuminated in the film as an extension of the genocide. Egoyan uses a film-within-a-film to move beyond a popular definition of genocide as mass killing alone and links the understanding of stories, truths, and perspectives in everyday life to the dehumanizing acts of genocide. Employing the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical theory of the Other (the ethical) and philosophical understandings of ontology (dehumanization) to illuminate the genocide and its ongoing denial, this article contends that Egoyan's focus on the generations of genocide survivors points to the ethical responsibility to one another that underlies everyday lives and sits at the heart of what is absent in the acts of genocide.

History

Journal

Genocide studies and prevention

Volume

3

Issue

2

Pagination

243 - 262

Publisher

University of Toronto Press, Journals Division

Location

Toronto, Ont.

ISSN

1911-0359

eISSN

1911-9933

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2008, Genocide Studies and Prevention

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