Description
In this book Joan Wallach Scott discusses the role history has played as an arbiter of right and wrong and of those who claim to act in its name-"in the name of history." Scott investigates three different instances in which repudiation of the past was conceived as a way to a better future: the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996, and the ongoing movement for reparations for slavery in the United States.
Scott shows how in these cases history was not only used to explain the past but to produce a particular future. Yet both past and future were subject to the political realities of their time and defined in terms of moral absolutes, often leading to deep contradictions. These three instances demonstrate that history is not an impartial truth, rather its very meaning is constructed by those who act in its name.
Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Central European University Press
Published: 12/10/2019
Pages: 140
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.10w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9789633863480
ISBN10: 9633863481
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | General
- Political Science | History & Theory | General
About the Author
Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.