| Popis: |
In this paper, I explore the phenomenon of public apologies for historical atrocities as a form of post-colonial exorcism. What does it mean for heads of state or churches to apologize for events in which they did not materially participate? What do such acts of apologizing tell us about the contemporary meaning of the events themselves, about a nation’s or church’s sense of corporate identity that extends to the past, and about the role of the aggrieved people in this discourse? One useful way of imagining this dialectic is for us to see these apologies as attempts to exorcise the ghosts of colonialism. The presence of ghosts is perhaps most symptomatic of unresolved lives, of failed closure, of the thwarting of the revelation of truth. Those who were wrongfully killed haunt the sites of their violation until the truth is revealed and their souls allowed to rest. This paper will examine a representative public apology in order to explore in what ways we can say who is haunted—the descendants of the victims or the descendants of the victimizers—and who benefits, and how, from a discursive act that simultaneously represents and exorcises the effects of the past. |
