What is it to do justice to the absent victims of past injustice, given the distance that separates us from them? Grounded in political theory and guided by the literature on historical justice, W. James Booth restores the dead to their central place at the heart of our understanding of why and how to deal with past injustice. Testimonies and accounts from the race war in the United States, the Holocaust, post-apartheid South Africa, Argentinas Dirty War and the conflict in Northern Ireland help advance and defend Booths claim that caring for the dead is a central part of addressing past injustice.
Memory, Historic Injustice, and Responsibility is an insightful and original book on the relationship of past and present in thinking about what it means to do justice. A valuable addition to the currently available literature on historical justice, the volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, philosophy, history, and law.
1. Introduction. An archipelago of absence 2. Justice between Past and Present 3. Is the past a foreign country? 4. Doing justice to the dead 5. Conclusion
Grounded in political theory and guided by the literature on historical justice, Memory, Historic Injustice, and Responsibility restores the dead to their central place at the heart of our understanding of why and how to deal with past injustice.
Is there such a thing as an intergenerational community of justice ? Do we owe solidarity to the dead? Are we morally obliged not to fall into a state of historical amnesia? These are philosophical questions of enormous scope and significance, and James Booth, with his formidable learning, intellectual clarity, and capacious insight, is uniquely well-equipped to do them full justice. This task is even more urgent in a time when certain EuropeanlƒD