After Evil

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-231-15037-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 544 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 733 g

The way in which mainstream human rights discourse speaks of such evils as the Holocaust, slavery, or apartheid puts them solidly in the past. Its elaborate techniques of "transitional" justice encourage future generations to move forward by creating a false assumption of closure, enabling those who are guilty to elude responsibility. This approach to history, common to late-twentieth-century humanitarianism, doesn't presuppose that evil ends when justice begins. Rather, it assumes that a time before justice is the moment to put evil in the past.

Merging examples from literature and history, Robert Meister confronts the problem of closure and the resolution of historical injustice. He boldly challenges the empty moral logic of "never again" or the theoretical reduction of evil to a cycle of violence and counterviolence, broken only once evil is remembered for what it was. Meister criticizes such methods for their deferral of justice and susceptibility to exploitation and elaborates the flawed moral logic of "never again" in relation to Auschwitz and its evolution into a twenty-first-century doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Meister, Robert

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtspolitik, Erinnerungskultur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface: My TaskIntroduction: Disavowing Evil1. The Ideology and Ethics of Human Rights2. Ways of Winning3. Living On4. The Dialectic of Race and Place5. "Never Again"6. Still the Jewish Question?7. Bystanders and Victims8. Adverse Possession9. States of "Emergency"10. Surviving CatastropheConclusion: Justice in TimeAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Meister, Robert
Robert Meister is professor of social and political thought at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An active participant in California higher education politics, he is director of the Bruce Initiative on Rethinking Capitalism at UCSC and the author of Political Identity: Thinking Through Marx.