Ethical Restoration after Communal Violence

Marguerite La Caze is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Queensland.

One of the virtues of La Caze’s book is that it summons a plurality of voices to build her account. She invokes the usual suspects in the post-atrocity literature, but also authors who are less familiar within this scholarship, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida or even Albert Camus. Likewise, although La Caze is rooted more firmly in the continental tradition, she engages the work of analytic philosophers. And when she relies on canonical authors, she draws on them in original ways, that bear directly on neuralgic discussions, as when she delves into the work of Immanuel Kant to shed light on discussions about the importance of building trust in transitional societies. The result is a richly textured and complex work of political philosophy. Alongside the subtle exegesis of the work of these authors, the book examines concrete cases to inform its claims. They range from the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath or the Nazi occupation of France to post-colonial Australia or the abuses in the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. The cases are very diverse, as the author herself admits. This diversity helps La Caze drive home the point that ethical responses to past atrocity must be sensitive to social and political circumstances, a point she is right to underscore.

• IntroductionSection I: Negative Conditions of Ethical Restoration.Chapter 1: I Love Living: Derrida, the Death Penalty, and Unconditional Abolition. Chapter 2: The Taste of Ashes: Beauvoir, Vengefulness, and the Death Penalty in Post-war France.Chapter 3: At First Blush: Guilt, Shame, and Humiliation. Section II: Positive Conditions of Ethical RestorationChapter 4: Pretending Peace: Kant, Améry, and Political Trust.Chapter 5: Betrayed by Life: Derrida, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Post-genocide Rwanda. Chapter 6: A Dreadful Solitude: Jankélévitch, Remorse and the Demand for Atonement. Chapter 7: This Hole in my Heart: Acts of Atonement in Post-colonial Australia.Chapter 8: In Search of a Magic Spell: Hannah Arendt and Self-forgiveness.ConclusionBibliography