Un/contemplations of Brutality: Exploring the Compatibilities of Culture, Existentialism, and Violence

• In Event: Critical Conversations About Identity and Equity in History Education

Abstract

This project examined the function of culture within the context of extreme and unthinkable (historical) violence. Engaging with the perspectives of perpetrators from the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne, Poland (1941) and the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994), the authors applied terror management theory to interrogate cultural implications of responsibility. Through the methodological approach “thinking with theory,” we engaged with utterances of the perpetrators of extreme violence to seek a deeper, more complex (cultural) understanding of how the development of psychological structures—cultural worldviews and self-esteem—protects people, even evildoers, from existential terror, and how understanding this protective function might serve a public good as it could help prevent or thwart violence and harm.

Authors

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico

• Cathryn van Kessel, University of Alberta