Dominik Markl’s research while affiliated with University of Innsbruck and other places

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 challenges memory studies to analyze transmissions of discourses which justify mass violence and challenge the focus on denial. On the one hand, the Russian regime’s claim to undertake “denazification” and prevent a “genocide” expounds the seminal role of cultural memory in politics. The weaponization of history, international law, and religion is widely accepted in Russian society and by global populisms. On the other hand, the invasion came as a surprise even to many experts because in politics, media, and research, justifications of mass violence are often dismissed as pretexts distracting from facts. Yet, the dismissal entails a major lacuna: we know too little about how justifications travel through societies and have a long-term impact. The article proposes that while acts of mass violence alter political and socio-economic realities, justifications of mass violence establish the linguistic and heuristic parameter for their subsequent juridical, moral, and scholarly evaluation. Normalizations of justifications contribute to perpetuating societal fault lines and set the frame for further conflict. The memory studies focus on transgenerational transmissions of psycho-social sequalae of violence laid the groundwork for understanding longue durée transmissions. However, memory studies have focused on denial as a key psychological and political driving force of transmissions, while, for instance, Russian and Serbian memory cultures are shaped by both denial and outright affirmations—not-even-denial—of past mass violence as model for present politics. Memory studies provide the appropriate conceptual space as a framework for addressing implicit normalizations and explicit affirmations of justifications of mass violence.

Mass violence—killings and other forms of violence that aim at exterminating large groups of people—is often called a tragedy. The trope can be found in testimonies of victimization, justifications of perpetration, journalistic, political, and academic language as well as in popular parlance. The article examines the divergent usages of the travelling trope of tragedy with particular emphasis on its role in forming justificatory discourse. The issue at stake is that the trope of tragedy does not remain confined to outright justifications such as juridical legitimization, moral vindication, political propaganda etc., but permeates condemnation and critique as well. The rationale of the analysis is that justifications of acts of mass violence that are negotiated in key areas of the cultural canon give a culturally specific, often identificatory, meaning to acts that are, from a critical perspective, mostly either considered senseless or comprehended in economic and sociopolitical terms. Yet it is largely owing to justificatory discourses that acts of mass violence do not remain single, exorbitant events, but have a lasting impact by shaping the linguistic and heuristic framework of their subsequent evaluation. When condemnation and critique adopt these terminologies and frameworks—such as the notion of purity underlying the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, or the ethnopolitical paradigm informing the concept of genocide—this effects an uneasy mimetic participation in transmitting justifications of mass violence. The trope of tragedy makes it possible to address the issue of mimetic participation by drawing attention to the audience as an indispensable element of the discourse.

This article investigates the justifications of mass violence in Deuteronomistic historiography through the lens of cultural trauma. The analysis concentrates on the representation and justification of mass violence, that is mass killings and other forms of violence against non-combatants, in Israel’s conquest of the promised land in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua as well as during the loss of the land at the hand of the Assyrian and Babylonian armies, as narrated in 2 Kings 17–25. A comparison of these texts and their respective historical backgrounds helps to profile the contrasts and continuities between them. Trauma theory sheds light on both narratives as media to recover agency and to reconstruct collective identity for emerging Judaism via the historiographical representation of cultural trauma.

Jerônimo foi um dos mais influentes estudiosos da Bíblia na história do cristianismo, e o primeiro a traduzir a maioria dos livros do cânon bíblico. Por mais de um milênio, sua tradução latina tornou-se a amplamente aceita versão da “Vulgata” no cristianismo ocidental. Já durante sua vida, os trabalhos exegéticos de Jerônimo foram usados por proeminentes figuras como Agostinho de Hipona. Durante todo o período medieval e no início da modernidade, Jerônimo foi retratado como um ótimo exemplo de formação ascética. Com Ambrósio, Agostinho e Gregório, foi venerado como um dos grandes doutores da Igreja latina, e confirmado pelo Papa Bonifácio VIII em 1295. Mesmo hoje, um dos mais amplamente divulgados comentários, em volume único, sobre a Bíblia é intitulado The Jerome Biblical Commentary. Qual a chave do sucesso de Jerônimo? A seguir, explorarei alguns aspectos de sua vida e formação que, mutatis mutandis, ainda podem servir como modelo para biblistas de hoje.

David is one of the most colorful figures of the Bible and of the entire literature that has come down to us from antiquity. David’s characterization as a sensitive musician, a violent warrior, and an emotional lover is intertwined with his political career as king of Israel. David’s characterization in the books of Samuel, already transformed in the Psalter and in Chronicles, is the starting point for a variegated history of reception. In the New Testament, David appears as the ancestor and type of Christ. From late antiquity to early modern times, Christian emperors and kings were portrayed as new Davids. Only the Enlightenment cast dark critical shadows over the figure of David. Modern interest shifted towards his individual, psychological traits. After sketching the biblical images of David, their reception, especially in political terms, is traced up to the present.

The Decalogue’s iconic status within its history of reception, especially in the modern era, has made it a focal point of scholarly discussion. Its transmission in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, as well as its relation to comparative material in the Pentateuch’s legal texts, has provided an ample field of inquiry for modern historical criticism. One of the main areas that has preoccupied scholars is the quest for its origin, which is the first focus in this chapter. The chapter then turns to some of the issues that specifically concern the Decalogue’s role within Deuteronomy, where it features as a portable monument to the covenant at Horeb. The prohibition against venerating “other gods” is unfolded in Deuteronomy 6-11, and several scholars have discussed the Decalogue’s relationship with the book’s collection of laws. In the late written chapter Deuteronomy 4, the Decalogue’s prohibition of images arrives at its theological culmination in the profession of monotheism. Moses’s prophecy that breaking the prohibition of idolatry would lead to exile invites reflection on the symbolism of the breaking and renewal of the stone tablets in Deuteronomistic historiography.