1st Edition

History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence Time and Justice

By Berber Bevernage Copyright 2012
262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

262 Pages
by Routledge

Modern historiography embraces the notion that time is irreversible, implying that the past should be imagined as something ‘absent’ or ‘distant.’ Victims of historical injustice, however, in contrast, often claim that the past got ‘stuck’ in the present and that it retains a haunting presence. History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence is centered around the provocative thesis that the way... Read more

1. Introduction  Part I  2. ‘La Muerte No Existe.’ The Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Resistance against the Irreversible Time of History  3. ‘We the Victims and Survivors Declare the Past to Be in the Present.’ The ‘New South Africa’ and the Legacy of Apartheid  4. ‘The Past Must Remain the Past.’ Time of History and Time of Justice in the ‘New Sierra Leone’  Part II  5. A Hard Time Thinking the Irrevocable. Why It Is So Difficult to Understand the Haunting Past  6. Searching for Other Times. Some Critiques of the Absent and Distant Past  7. Spectral times. Jacques Derrida and the Deconstruction of Time  8. History and the Work of Mourning  Conclusion

Biography

Berber Bevernage is a post-doctoral research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium. His work has been published in History and Theory, Social History, and History Workshop Journal.

"In the end, Bevernage accomplishes nothing less than a completely new understanding of the referential illusion of historical discourse … As with many truly original works of criticism, Bevernage’s arguments seem so perfectly obvious in hindsight … Reading History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence is a humbling experience." Wulf Kansteiners, SUNY Binghamton

"This book is already destined to become a classic." Chris Lorenz, Free University of Amsterdam