"What's Wrong with Genocide?: Why Genocide is Not an Ethical Problem"

Anne O'Byrne, associate professor in Philosophy at Stony Brook University, will attempt to shift thinking about genocide out of the realm of ethics into the realm of politics.

The starting point is the thought that genocide can be located at the end of ethics, or at its beginning, as if to say: "If anything is prohibited, genocide is prohibited." She will argue that this fails to capture the plural nature of the phenomenon. After all, there is no such thing as a single- handed genocide, and the victims are attacked as a group.

Drawing on Agamben, Arendt, Jonas and Badiou, she will argue that the question of genocide is central to political existence.