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Over the past two decades, many states have heard demands that they
recognize and apologize for historic wrongs. Such calls have not
elicited uniform or predictable responses. While some states have
apologized for past crimes, others continue to silence, deny, and
relativize dark pasts. What explains the tremendous variation in
how states deal with past crimes? When and why do states change the
stories they tell about their dark pasts. Dark Pasts argues that
international pressures increase the likelihood of change in
official narratives about dark pasts, but domestic considerations
determine the content of such change. Rather than simply changing
with the passage of time, persistence, or rightness, official
narratives of dark pasts are shaped by interactions between
political factors at the domestic and international levels.
Unpacking the complex processes through which international
pressures and domestic dynamics shape states' narratives, Jennifer
M. Dixon analyzes the trajectories over the past sixty years of
Turkey's narrative of the 1915-17 Armenian Genocide and Japan's
narrative of the 1937-38 Nanjing Massacre. While both states'
narratives started from similar positions of silencing,
relativizing, and denial, Japan has come to express regret and
apologize for the Nanjing Massacre, while Turkey has continued to
reject official wrongdoing and deny the genocidal nature of the
violence. Combining historical richness and analytical rigor, Dark
Pasts unravels the complex processes through which such narratives
are constructed and contested, and offers an innovative way to
analyze narrative change. Her book sheds light on the persistent
presence of the past and reveals how domestic politics functions as
a filter that shapes the ways in which states' narratives change-or
do not-over time.
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