Communities of memory : on identity, memory, and debt
By: BOOTH, W. James
.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, June 1999American Political Science Review 93, 2, p. 249-264Abstract: In looking at political identity from the standpoint of continuity across time, of memory, and of responsibility for the past, I am principally concerned with political identity and moral accountability. Identity statements often appear as propositions about current values, institutions, and so on, but I will treat them here as something more than present-tense descriptions of our culture or political life.(1) I will also treat their moral-political content as extending beyond demands for recognition. Identity claims, when pushed, characteristically seek something else: to establish the sameness, the continuity, of a person or community across time and in the face of apparent change. Central for the discussion here is that these claims typically also have a moral-temporal dimension: They ground ideas of attribution and responsibility, for deeds past and for the future. What I discuss, then, are the ways in which we think of a political community as existing continuously over time and as therefore being the subject of attribution, responsible for the past, which belongs to it, and accountable for a future that is also its.
In looking at political identity from the standpoint of continuity across time, of memory, and of responsibility for the past, I am principally concerned with political identity and moral accountability. Identity statements often appear as propositions about current values, institutions, and so on, but I will treat them here as something more than present-tense descriptions of our culture or political life.(1) I will also treat their moral-political content as extending beyond demands for recognition. Identity claims, when pushed, characteristically seek something else: to establish the sameness, the continuity, of a person or community across time and in the face of apparent change. Central for the discussion here is that these claims typically also have a moral-temporal dimension: They ground ideas of attribution and responsibility, for deeds past and for the future. What I discuss, then, are the ways in which we think of a political community as existing continuously over time and as therefore being the subject of attribution, responsible for the past, which belongs to it, and accountable for a future that is also its.
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.