Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to
know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see ... these are
all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognize
their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their
partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband
is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments
deny their responsibility for atrocities, and plan them to achieve
'maximum deniability'. Truth Commissions try to overcome the
suppression and denial of past horrors. Bystander nations deny
their responsibility to intervene.
Do these phenomena have anything in common? When we deny, are we
aware of what we are doing or is this an unconscious defence
mechanism to protect us from unwelcome truths? Can there be
cultures of denial? How do organizations like Amnesty and Oxfam try
to overcome the public's apparent indifference to distant suffering
and cruelty? Is denial always so bad - or do we need positive
illusions to retain our sanity?
"States of Denial" is the first comprehensive study of both the
personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are
avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical studies of depression,
to media images of suffering, to explanations of the 'passive
bystander' and 'compassion fatigue'. The book shows how organized
atrocities - the Holocaust and other genocides, torture, and
political massacres - are denied by perpetrators and by bystanders,
those who stand by and do nothing.
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