Dark Pasts

Book excerpt: In Dark Pasts, Jennifer M. Dixon asks why states deny past atrocities, and when and why they change the stories they tell about them. In recent decades, states have been called on to acknowledge and apologize for historic wrongs. Some have apologized, while others have silenced, denied, and relativized past crimes. Dark Pasts unravels the complex and fraught processes through which state narratives of past atrocities are constructed, contested, and defended. Focusing on Turkey's narrative of the Armenian Genocide and Japan's narrative of the Nanjing Massacre, Dixon shows that international pressures increase the likelihood of change in states' narratives of their own dark pasts, even as domestic considerations determine their content. Combining historical richness and analytical rigor, Dark Pasts is a revelatory study of the persistent presence of the past and the politics that shape narratives of state wrongdoing.