Vidal-Naquet was also active in condemning denial of the Armenian Genocide . Vidal-Naquet , who had answered or criticized Holocaust negationist Robert Faurisson in several of his works , once employed Faurisson as an example to illustrate " what the Armenian minorities might feel " : Let us imagine a negationist Robert Faurisson as a governmental minister , a Faurisson president of the Republic , a Faurisson general , a Faurisson ambassador , a Faurisson president of the Turkish Historical Commission and a member of the senate of the University of Istanbul , a Faurisson member of the United Nations , a Faurisson responding in the press each time the question of the Jews is raised . In brief , a state-sponsored Faurisson paired with an international Faurisson and , along with all that , a Talaat-Himmler blessed , since 1943 , with an official mausoleum in the country 's capital . Vidal-Naquet was one of the first scholars to deconstruct historical revisionism , notably in '' The Assassins of Memory '' and '' Reflexions on Genocide '' . He was also opposed to the 23 February 2005 French law on colonialism passed by the conservative Union for a Popular Movement ( UMP ) , but which was finally repealed by president Jacques Chirac in the beginning of 2006 . Vidal-Naquet also criticized the 1990 Gayssot Act which prohibits revisionist discourse , claiming that the law should n't interfere in historical matters . Vidal-Naquet 's arguments against legislation relating to historical studies is not , however , a door opened to revisionist speech . He once declared that he would rather name revisionists " negationists " , and that he would n't engage with them for " simple and scientific reasons . An astronomer does n't debate with an astrologer . I would n't discuss with someone who supports the idea that the moon is made of Roquefort ... it is impossible . " While his analyses e.g. of Greek tragedy and the institution of the Athenian ephebia has been favourably received by many French intellectuals , they have been violently challenged elsewhere , particularly by Italian philologists who , like Vidal-Naquet himself , were favourably inclined towards a Marxist analysis . His structuralist approach has been called ahistorical , his analyses of the texts as lacking in thoroughness and even manipulative , using categories like polysemy and ambiguity which his critics found do not apply
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Pierre Vidal-Naquet