The Fate of the Dead

Abstract

Jacob Hoerger Dissertation Advisor: Michael Rosen The Fate of the Dead Efforts to redress historical injustice have come to the forefront of political contestation around the world. Some believe these efforts constitute an attack on historical figures who were the perpetrators of injustice. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that, while there may be other grounds to object to redress measures, the worry that they harm past perpetrators is unfounded. To prepare the argument, I examine a line of thinking that emerged in the twentieth century about how it is possible for the living to help and harm the dead victims of past injustice. This involves attempting to manipulate the web of meaning of which both the living and dead are a part in order to change the significance of the suffering of the dead. I draw here on the work of Walter Benjamin and Saidiya Hartman. I leverage their insights to then consider the question of past perpetrators. In response to the objection that past perpetrators are being harmed by the living, some argue that the dead can simply have no effect on the living and that the living can have no effect on the dead. Many contemporary advocates of redress would reject this because, as I have just said, it would curtail living peoples’ ability to attend to dead victims of past injustice. However, once one grants that people in the past can be helped and harmed by the actions of living people, how does one prevent a clash between the will and interests of the dead victims and those of the dead perpetrators? One response is to say that by committing acts of injustice, the dead perpetrators forfeit their claims to be respected by living people. For a variety of reasons, this is unlikely to be persuasive to those who care about the dead perpetrators. To name just one: Given that moral reasoning changes over time, it might strike some as unfair to condemn many for actions and beliefs whose wrongness they could not have known the full extent of at the time. I accept that living people can maintain an attachment to past perpetrators. However, rather than believing that this attachment will reinforce the status quo, I argue that by viewing past perpetrators as capable of redemption, one gains a powerful reason to work to mitigate the negative effects of the dead’s wrongdoing. If past perpetrators were to know what the living now know about their unjust actions, either they would choose for living people to redress their actions on their behalf or they would still insist on their errant ways and truly would forfeit the right for living people to hold fast to them. This argument establishes the general principle that efforts to redress the actions of past perpetrators enhance rather than threaten their legacy. I develop this argument in seven chapters. In Chapter 1, I examine the history of the concept of “historical injustice” and explain how it is related to the concept of “redemption.” In Chapter II, I explain that to fully address the politics of redemption, especially as it pertains to the perpetrators of injustice, it is necessary to move beyond the view that redress efforts are either “material” or “symbolic.” In Chapter III, I turn to the work of Walter Benjamin as inspiration for a theory of how to help the dead. In Chapter IV, I focus on the work of Saidiya Hartman to understand how the dead may be harmed by the living. Both of these thinkers were primarily concerned with addressing the unjust suffering of victims of historical injustice. This is important in its own right. Additionally, I examine how their arguments may be applied to past perpetrators. In Chapter V, I argue that it is possible to believe in the redemption of past perpetrators of injustice in a way that supports rather than hampers efforts to redress their wrongdoing. In Chapter VI, I analyze the notion of “never again” to show one way in which efforts to redeem past perpetrators can be developed in alignment with attention to past victims. Finally, in Chapter VII, I suggest my argument about past perpetrators opens up an underappreciated view on living peoples’ relationship to the past as a whole, a view I refer to as “left conservatism.”