Arthur G. Neal

Collective trauma, apologies, and the politics of memory

The contemporary period has been described as the age of apologies (Brooks 1999). The collective conscience of many nations of the world has become seriously disturbed by the modern imperative to confront an ugly past. According to Elazar Barkan (2000), the guilt of nations stems from modern awareness that the resources of the state have been drawn upon to promote such injustices as genocide, racism, and oppression. The many atrocities of the twentieth century have resulted in enduring forms of collective trauma for women and for racial, ethnic, political, and religious minorities. In order to deal with these atrocities and traumas, a great deal of repair work is required in the social realm. Indeed, most nations of the world have a lot to apologize for in efforts to restore a sense of society as moral community (Cairns 2003). The painfulness and discomfort that accompanies the collective memories of the victims of historical atrocities requires some form of resolution. Selective ignoring or denial by the perpetrators is not a reasonable option. In her discussion of ‘the banality of evil,’ Hannah Arendt (1963) called attention to the imperative of nations recognizing that their social heritage contains widespread injustices and atrocities directed toward subgroups of the population. The dialectic between the suffering of victims and the forgetfulness of perpetrators requires some form of resolution in a civil society. Modern perspectives on atrocities and collective trauma stem from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights elaborated by the United Nations following the end of World War II (Glendon 2001). The defeats of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan were not sufficient for obtaining closure to World War II. While the banality of Nazi Germany was recognized during the war, awareness of evil in human affairs took on new dimensions with the discovery and liberation of extermination camps. The brutality of the Japanese army in China and in other occupied countries (Hicks 1994; Chang 1997) served as a grim reminder of what human beings are capable of doing to each other. The Universal Declaration served not only as a basis for the trial of war criminals, but also established that there are universal principles of morality that transcend cultural relativity and the sovereignty of the national state (Donnelly 1989). If human rights are universal, then their application is timeless, providing a basis for retrospective judgments on past events as well as establishing principles that have enduring, perpetual applications for the future (Robinson 2000). If human rights are universal, they are also retroactive and perpetual; if the principles reach all the way forward, they also reach all the way back. It is for these reasons that the principles of human rights have been reflected in the plethora of apologies in recent years as well as in concerns for restitution growing out of the collective guilt of nations (Barkan 2000). The Universal Declaration provides a basis for re-examination of the entire social heritage of a given group of people.