Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.17 (927 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0813592232 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 232 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-06-30 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Chapters on post-apartheid Namibia and South Africa, on Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian Second World War internees, and on legacies of slavery that still disable African Americans suggest his topical scope. But heritage—history shaped to present purposes—is increasingly fashioned by the losers. Compassionate erudition, deft demolition of holier-than-thou posturing, and clarity of expression make this a minor classic reminiscent of Paul Bator's 1983 The International Trade in Art. But the book's greatest merit is its profound and lucid critique of the causes and political, legal, economic, and symbolic implications of reparation claims. To
This reissue is the first paperback edition and contains a new preface by the author. Making Whole What Has Been Smashed explores the spread in recent years of political efforts to rectify injustices handed down from the past. Although it recognizes that campaigns for reparations may lead to an improvement in the well-being of victims of mistreatment by states and to reconciliation among former antagonists, this timely book, featuring a new and updated preface, examines the extent to which the concern with the past may represent a departure from the traditionally future-oriented stance of progressive politics. Viewing the search for “coming to terms with the past” as a form of politics, John Torpey argues that there are major differences between reparations for the living victims of past wrongdoing and reparations for the descendants of such victims. More fundamentally, he argues that claims for reparations comprise a relatively novel kind of politics that involves a quest for symbolic recognition and material compensation for those seeking them—through the idiom of the past rather than the present.