In the Name of History

Joan Wallach Scott

Published by Central European University Press 2019

In the Name of History

Joan Wallach Scott

In the series The Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9789633863497

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 / Editor information

Scott Joan Wallach :

Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reviews

Sophia Rosenfeld:
"Scott, by contrast, takes as her subject not truth but ethics. Specifically, she is concerned with how the act of representing the past—or the “historical operation,” as she calls it, borrowing from Michel De Certeau—advances the cause of justice. The opening claim of In the Name of History is that the historian, by engaging in this particular “operation,” is always also defining the relationship between what is no longer and what lies ahead. The history we produce may reveal our consistent fallibilities as humans but, even more, it establishes as past what we want to leave behind, premised on the assumption that we can do better and will. That is particularly so in the case of historically focused tribunals, the subject of two of Scott’s three major examples in this short but intense book."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Table of Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction The “Historical Operation” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. The Nuremberg Tribunal, 1946 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
Chapter 2. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
Chapter 3. The Movement for Reparations for Slaver y in the United States Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
Epilogue. The “Lessons of History” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
Endnotes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125

Language: English
Publisher: Central European University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 140
Keywords: 20th century; Nuremberg; Political philosophy; Slavery; South Africa; World War II

eBook

Published: December 10, 2019
ISBN: 9789633863497