The Politics of Regret

Why the sudden fuss about public apologies? What role do troubled events of the past play in contemporary politics? Ever raised one or the other question? And are you a demanding and active student? This course might be for you.

"The Politics of Regret" course treats past injustices as being at the center of contemporary world politics. We begin with questions of guilt, trauma, and responsibility, before moving to forms of transitional justice, be it truth commissions, trials, or lustrations. This said, significant attention is being paid also to official and unofficial apologies, which have been clearly stirring a lot of attention in the past couple of years. While part of this class is theoretical, we will examine (and debate) issues using examples from Europe and North America in particular.

As part of this course, you will learn:

- how the past is being constructed to serve present causes (and by whom),

- how past injustices are mobilized, demanded but also made salient,

- why the past matters and why it matters (and why it matters now).

Please note that this is an undergraduate course – but one that requires work and engagement. This is a course where we learn, and engage in debates, where we agree and disagree, but all discussions are grounded in scholarly literature.

With this in mind, please inform me by Week 2 if there are any reasons – religious, medical, any other – that might impact your performance in class and that you want me to take into consideration. We can make things work if I know in advance.

Schedule & Required Reading:

Class 1 Introductory Class

Class 2 Trauma, Guilt, and Responsibility

Class 3 Is the Past Another Country?

Judt, Tony. “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe.” Daedalus 121, no. 4 (1992): 83–118.

Class 4 Trials and Transitional Justice

Pinchevski, Amit – Liebes, Tamar. “Severed Voices: Radio and the Mediation of Trauma in the Eichmann Trial.” Public Culture 22, no. 2 (2010): 265–291

Class 5 Truth Commissions

Olsen, Tricia D. – Payne, Leigh A. – Reiter, Andrew G. – Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Eric. “When Truth Commissions Improve Human Rights.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4, no. 3 (2010): 457–76.

Class 6 Lustration and Vetting

Nalepa, Monica. Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010:1–30.

Class 7 Reparations and Compensations

De Greiff, Pablo. “Introduction – Repairing the past: Compensation for victims of human rights violations.” The Handbook of Reparations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Class 8 Emotions and Actions

Elster, Jon. Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004: 216–44.

Class 9 Public Apologies and National Membership

Nobles, Melissa. The Politics of Official Apologies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008: 1–41.

Class 10 Guest Lecture: Jelena Subotic & Daniel Levy

Class 11 The Social Drama of Apology

Kampf, Zohar. “Journalists as Actors in Social Dramas of Apology.” Journalism 12, no. 1 (2011): 71–87.

Class 12 Essay

Examination

Active Participation: 30%

Elevator Pitch: 20%

Essay: 50%

Students will receive detailed information on the examination in Week 1.