Winner, Prix Litteraire Paris-Liege 2021 Winner, French Voices
Award for Excellence in Publication and Translation When we speak
of mass killers, we may speak of radicalized ideologues,
mediocrities who only obey orders, or bloodthirsty monsters. Who
are these men who kill on a mass scale? What is their
consciousness? Do they not feel horror or compassion? Richard
Rechtman's Living in Death offers new answers to a question that
has haunted us at least since the Holocaust. For Rechtman, it is
not ideologies that kill, but people. This book descends into the
ordinary life of people who execute hundreds every day, the same
way others go to the office. Bringing philosophical sophistication
to the ordinary, the book constitutes an anthropology of mass
killers. Turning away from existing psychological and philosophical
accounts of genocide's perpetrators, Rechtman instead explores the
conditions under which administering death becomes a job like any
other. Considering Cambodia, Rwanda, and other mass killings,
Living in Death draws on a vast array of archival research,
psychological theory, and anecdotes from the author's clinical work
with refugees and former participants in genocide. Rechtman mounts
a compelling case for reframing and refocusing our attempts to
explain-and preempt-acts of mass torture, rape, killing, and
extermination. What we must see, Rechtman argues, is that for
genocidaires (those who carry out acts that are or approach
genocide), there is nothing extraordinary, unusual, or
world-historical about their actions. On the contrary, they are
preoccupied with the same mundane things that characterize any
other job: interactions with colleagues, living conditions, a drink
and a laugh at the end of the day. To understand this is to
understand how things came to be the way they are-and how they
might be different.
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