formulation of this process, which may contrast with the longer-term and legacy-
driven processes present in Rwanda and Myanmar. This could imply, once again,
a dual-insight. The rhetoric and political processes of autochthonous and
allochthonous discourses seem to be, to a degree, separable, appearing in all
three discussed cases under different guises. Speculative research, then, cannot
only look for such rhetoric in currently existing law, but within deeply ingrained
historical context, in an attempt to predict where it could move next. Rwanda
and Myanmar show that such discourses can clearly become relevant through
colonial legacy, but as independent post-colonial states age, I would argue it
becomes increasingly essential to search for new divisions of this kind as identity
groups shift and legal systems allow particular privileges of citizenship to flourish
amongst certain groups. Moreover, intertwined with the previous discussion of
communicative technology, this is one specific area of rhetoric that could be
probed for within burgeoning methods of mass communication.
Both examples discussed in this essay are merely preliminary examples—
the crucial point is that alternative and speculative methods such as these are
alternate options for finding utility in comparative genocide studies. The purpose
of these methods is to seek out areas in which pragmatic speculative research
can be done—the search for similarities that can be recontextualised into
temporal (in this case) lines of development potentially gives researchers
enhanced capabilities when looking for warning signs. Such comparative
methods do not seek to explain the logics of genocide as such, but to view such
logics in as close to an empirical manner as possible, in order to allow speculative
extrapolation. This isn't to discredit analytical approaches which take an
explanative approach—in fact, I would argue they must work in tandem, with
explanative approaches possibly being able to provide a crucial analytical
bounding box for empirical-speculative research. There is little point
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