Description
Book SynopsisLiving in Death 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 both an anthropology of mass killers and a challenge to the conditions that make genocide possible.
Table of ContentsForeword by Veena Das | vii
Introduction | 1
1. Those Who Kill | 13
The Confessions | 14 • The Killers’ Testimonies | 19
2. Monsters: Cruelty and Jouissance | 29
Fictions and Figures of Evil | 32 • The Archaic Remnants of Evil | 39
3. Ordinary Man and His Pathologies | 51
Banality and Mediocrity: The Ordinary According
to Arendt | 54 • When Ordinary Men Become
Killers | 65 • Blind Obedience and Submission to
Authority | 73 • The Pathologies of the Ordinary Man | 81
4. The Administration of Death | 92
To Make Die and Not to Let Live | 97 • The Khmer
Rouge Administration of Death, 1975–79 | 102 •
From Genocide to Genocidaires | 118
5. The Ordinary Life of Genocidaires | 130
The Executioner | 134 • Forms of Life and Ordinary
Lives | 141 • The Neighborhood, or the Elementary
Unity of the Genocidal Form of Life | 148
Conclusion | 173
Acknowledgments | 193
Notes | 195
