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Haleh Liza Gafori

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

A poem by Haleh Liza Gafori that criticizes the language of the so-called War on Teror.

What Love Knows

Jean-Luc Marion

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Conceiving of love phenomenologically as an “erotic reduction,” Marion argues that love, far from being a passion, is a point of view, a gift that always comes first and operates a profound ... More

Conceiving of love phenomenologically as an “erotic reduction,” Marion argues that love, far from being a passion, is a point of view, a gift that always comes first and operates a profound displacement in our experience. Similarly, the act of forgiveness is the simple (but by no means easy) act of giving again, of not insisting on reciprocity, of maintaining the gift as gift.Less

Revenge, Forgiveness, and Love

Regina M. Schwartz

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Schwartz argues that Shakespeare’s plays suggest forgiveness as an alternative to revenge (which is incapable of redressing wrongs) that is tied to recognition and the (re)discovery of love.

Looking Evil in the Eye/I: The Interminable Work of Forgiveness

Orna Ophir

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Picking up on the work of Melanie Klein and her followers, Ophir urges us to understand both love and forgiveness as life-long processes that can break the vicious cycle of violence and ... More

Picking up on the work of Melanie Klein and her followers, Ophir urges us to understand both love and forgiveness as life-long processes that can break the vicious cycle of violence and counter-violence, provided we confront evil not so much in its manifest and external forms but above all the evil in ourselves.Less

Beyond Right and Wrong: An Exploration of Justice and Forgiveness

Albert Mason

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Mason develops a comprehensive psychoanalytical notion of forgiveness that sees it not only as fundamental to the relationship of the analyst to the patient but of the relationships all of us ... More

Mason develops a comprehensive psychoanalytical notion of forgiveness that sees it not only as fundamental to the relationship of the analyst to the patient but of the relationships all of us entertain with others and with ourselves, a conception that culminates in the claim that forgiveness is a “vital need.”Less

To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible

Jacques Derrida

in Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World

Derrida’s reflections are centrally concerned with questioning the (im)morality of forgiveness, the fear that forgiving may lead to forgetting, the reciprocity of forgiveness asked for and ... More

Derrida’s reflections are centrally concerned with questioning the (im)morality of forgiveness, the fear that forgiving may lead to forgetting, the reciprocity of forgiveness asked for and forgiveness granted, and he seeks to find a way to think together forgiveness and reparation, the law and punishment.Less

Revision

Jill Stauffer

in Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard

Shows how revision—living the meaning of the past in the present moment in different ways—is possible and why it relies not only the will of one person but on a large number of human beings taking ... More

Shows how revision—living the meaning of the past in the present moment in different ways—is possible and why it relies not only the will of one person but on a large number of human beings taking responsibility for the building and repair of worlds and selves. Thus it helps to show that responsibility for recovery from violence must be widely shared rather than remaining a narrow legal concern.Less

Slavoj Žižek in Ramallah: Back to the Trauma Zone

Merav Yudilovith

in What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters

This chapter focuses on the world premiere of Udi Aloni's film, Forgiveness, in Ramallah. The screening of Forgiveness was attended by intellectuals as well as Palestinian artists and filmmakers such ... More

This chapter focuses on the world premiere of Udi Aloni's film, Forgiveness, in Ramallah. The screening of Forgiveness was attended by intellectuals as well as Palestinian artists and filmmakers such as Mahmoud Darwish and Slavoj Žižek. Two hours before the event, the second Lebanon war began as Israel entered Lebanon. In the film's commentary notes, Aloni wrote: “People flee from traumatic zones in an attempt to find a new life, only to find out that they are going back to the terror time and again.” This chapter describes the tension that foregrounds the Ramallah premiere of Forgiveness, along with some remarks by Aloni and Žižek about the film.Less

“I will tremble the underground”: On the Film Forgiveness

Slavoj Žižek

in What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters

This chapter examines Udi Aloni's film Forgiveness and its critique of Zionism in an unconditional fidelity to the Jewish tradition. Aloni challenges the ruling liberal attitude by addressing ... More

This chapter examines Udi Aloni's film Forgiveness and its critique of Zionism in an unconditional fidelity to the Jewish tradition. Aloni challenges the ruling liberal attitude by addressing different levels of ideology, art, and thought and achieves poetic power by creating new myths. Today, what we call the normal state of things has become indistinguishable from the state of emergency. The West is more and more often evoking some figure of fear and then promising protection from it. In such a scenario, the chapter suggests that the rhetoric of fear and emergency attempts to eclipse the act of thinking. It also discusses three major themes in Forgiveness: martyrdom, murder, and reconciliation. Finally, it considers the mechanisms of rules in the context of the underground.Less

Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Jus Post Bellum

Andrew Rigby

in Just War Theory: A Reappraisal

Until recently, just war theory has rarely, if ever, engaged with questions about what practices might be required to build the just peace for which a just war should have been waged. Most of the ... More

Until recently, just war theory has rarely, if ever, engaged with questions about what practices might be required to build the just peace for which a just war should have been waged. Most of the literature on post-conflict social reconstruction has not been concerned with issues of whether there was any justification to the conflicts in question. This chapter brings these debates together by arguing that a just and durable post-conflict peace requires a variety of processes to heal the scars of war sufficiently to open up the possibilities of future peaceful and just co-existence between former enemies. Operating with the non-ideal concept of a peace which is “just enough”, this chapter discusses examples – drawn from numerous conflicts and the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in particular – of “memory” or “forgiveness” work as some ways in which former enemies have “dealt with the past” in pursuit of some form of reconciliation. Although context-sensitivity is crucial, some general guidelines can be drawn from such analyses which could provide a peacebuilding framework for jus post bellum.Less

Non-Sovereign Forgiveness Mercy among Equals in The Laws of Candy

Bernadette Meyler

in Theaters of Pardoning

This chapter examines The Laws of Candy, composed either partially or principally by playwright John Ford, who resided for a long time in the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court that formed ... More

This chapter examines The Laws of Candy, composed either partially or principally by playwright John Ford, who resided for a long time in the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court that formed England’s early law schools. While on first blush The Laws of Candy seems merely to displace sovereignty from a King onto a legislative body, this chapter argues that it rejects sovereignty and a vision of pardoning attached to sovereignty in its entirety. Instead, the play presents the possibility of reconstructing a state faced with potential dissolution through a series of non-sovereign offers of forgiveness. The priority here is placed on law over sovereignty. The chapter also examines how this emphasis relates back to a possible intertext for the play, Plato’s Laws, which was widely read and cited by lawyers, including in Henry Finch’s Nomotexnia, and in compilations of ancient materials, such as Polyanthea and Polyanthea Nova.Less

Foodways

Anna Servaes

in "Franco-American Identity, Community, and La Guiannée"

This chapter considers food along the Guiannée’s journey on New Year’s Eve. Traditionally, food was offered during the carnival time to nourish the community, including the indigent, during the ... More

This chapter considers food along the Guiannée’s journey on New Year’s Eve. Traditionally, food was offered during the carnival time to nourish the community, including the indigent, during the winter months when no crops were available. The prepared meals and other foods are offered in exchange for the performance. In the Midwest, the main communal meal is a chicken bouillon, a chicken soup. Offering and sharing food during the carnival season renews the solidarity among the members through forgiveness of past conflicts. Sharing meals also contributes to the collective imagination and cultural transmission through the stories or information recalled at these communal meals.Less

The Morality of Law: The Case against Deportation of Settled Immigrants

Doris Marie Provine

in Closing the Rights Gap: From Human Rights to Social Transformation

There is no internationally recognized right to reside in the nation of one’s choice, but there are strong arguments for accepting the fact of non-citizen residence as grounds for some of the rights ... More

There is no internationally recognized right to reside in the nation of one’s choice, but there are strong arguments for accepting the fact of non-citizen residence as grounds for some of the rights citizens enjoy under domestic law. International human rights treaties suggest a way forward. These instruments spell out basic economic and social rights associated with human dignity, including the right to own property, to earn a living, and to quiet enjoyment of family life. The task is to persuade decision makers to extend these rights, through domestic law, to settled non-citizens on human rights grounds. This type of transformation is underway in the United States and some other nations, precipitated by conscious raising, publicity, political pressure, and lawsuits.Less

The Four Dimensions of Art: On the Film Forgiveness

Alain Badiou

in What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and Other Specters

This chapter examines Udi Aloni's film Forgiveness and its four dimensions relating to history, narrative, psychoanalysis, and culture. It considers Aloni's idea that Palestine is the name that ... More

This chapter examines Udi Aloni's film Forgiveness and its four dimensions relating to history, narrative, psychoanalysis, and culture. It considers Aloni's idea that Palestine is the name that prevents Israel from becoming the incarnation of a Jewish universality in the eyes of the world. But it is also Israel that prevents Palestine from becoming the incarnation of Arab universality in the eyes of the world. Aloni does not inscribe his film into a prefabricated or abstract vision of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The question of war or of the sharing of territory is not his main problem. Udi thinks that Palestine and the Palestinians are inscribed into the very essence of Israel. The chapter concludes that Forgiveness belongs to what it calls affirmationism—the doctrine according to which ideas generated by art do not so much carry a judgment on the world as indicate the point from which the world might be transfigured.Less

[Untitled]: “Samoans Will Forgive, but Never Forget”

Patricia O'Brien

in Tautai: Samoa, World History, and the Life of Ta'isi O. F. Nelson

This summation of Ta’isi’s life evokes his own words to capture the ways Ta’isi and the history he shaped have been remembered and forgotten. As well as outlining the aftermath of his death, the ... More

This summation of Ta’isi’s life evokes his own words to capture the ways Ta’isi and the history he shaped have been remembered and forgotten. As well as outlining the aftermath of his death, the chapter looks at the ways historians have assessed his life and contribution. It concludes with the apology by Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2002 and her reception at Ta’isi’s home following a forgiveness ceremony by the Ta’isi and Tamasese families. The chapter ends with the assessment that Ta’isi was a tautai, a navigator to his people in the fraught and complex new world order of the twentieth century.Less

The Poisoned Gift of Forgiveness(Jane Eyre)

Henry Staten

in Spirit Becomes Matter: The Brontes, George Eliot, Nietzsche

Jane Eyre focuses from the outset on the conflict between a “pagan” principle of ethical vengeance (exemplified in Jane’s early outburst against her aunt), and the Christian principle of forgiveness ... More

Jane Eyre focuses from the outset on the conflict between a “pagan” principle of ethical vengeance (exemplified in Jane’s early outburst against her aunt), and the Christian principle of forgiveness to which the saintly Helen Burns introduces the young Jane in the orphanage. Forgiveness is the very essence of “gift”— “pure grace,” as Vladimir Jankélévitch says—and Bronté’s investigation of the psychology of forgiveness is, correspondingly, intertwined with an exploration of the psychology of gift-giving. There are two central scenes of forgiveness: Jane’s attempt to force her forgiveness on her dying aunt, who will have none of it, and St. John’s purported forgiveness of Jane after she insults him in rejecting his offer of marriage. As Jane understands, St. John’s forgiveness is actually a covert form of revenge—a paradigm case of the poisoning of the aggressive instincts when they are controlled by means of a moral ideology that refuses to recognize their real physiological hydraulics. Brontë’s analysis of forgiveness as poisoned gift and as perverted channel for will to power unfolds across three interlocked scenes of gift-giving, each involving two actors. In the first, Jane is the gift-giver and would-be dominator; in the second and third, she is the gift-receiver who must resist domination. In the first and third scenes, what is involved is the sublime gift of forgiveness, in the second scene, ordinary material gifts. The second scene makes explicit the fact that gifts can be used as an instrument of domination (in a way that is relatively innocuous, by comparison with the gift of forgiveness); hence, the second scene mediates between the first and third scenes of gift-giving, making explicit what remains implicit (though plainly visible) in them. The St. John Rivers plot, normally underplayed or completely ignored by critics, is central to the literary and intellectual design of the novel, which is structured narratively around Jane’s successive rejections of Rochester’s and St. John’s efforts to appropriate her, and intellectually around Jane’s struggle to work out a version of Christian moral ideology that is compatible with her culture, but which will not stifle her psycho-physiological economy. That Christian doctrine is an ideological instrument of domination is first made evident through the figure of Brockelhurst. Brontë then casts a glaring light on this social function of moral ideology by making Helen, the most abject and submissive character in the book, enunciate the doctrine of forgiveness as a rationale for social submissiveness. The theme of Jane’s oppression by religious-moral ideology is then cast into the background during her time with Rochester, but re-emerges with St. John, in such a way as to close the ideological circle that opens with Helen. Forgiveness operates in the subjugated subject (Helen) as an ideological prop for submission, in the subjugating subject (St. John) as an ideological prop for subjugation.Less

Forgiveness and the Rat Man: Kierkegaard, ‘Narrative Unity’ and ‘Wholeheartedness’ Revisited

John Lippitt

in Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self

As Kierkegaardian narrativists such as John J. Davenport have revised and expanded upon their positions, the gap between them and narratosceptics has narrowed significantly. Despite this narrowing, ... More

As Kierkegaardian narrativists such as John J. Davenport have revised and expanded upon their positions, the gap between them and narratosceptics has narrowed significantly. Despite this narrowing, Davenport’s continued emphasis on the Frankfurtian term ‘wholeheartedness’ (and its purported superiority to ‘ambivalence’) remains problematic. This is brought into view via a consideration of J. David Velleman’s critique of Harry G. Frankfurt in the light of Freud’s ‘Rat Man’ case. The Rat Man’s problem is not his ambivalence, but the self-misinterpretation that constitutes his reaction to it – something troublingly close to Frankfurt’s proposed cure for ambivalence itself. Very often, however, psychotherapy’s purpose is not to take a client from ambivalence to wholeheartedness, but from feeling unmanageably to manageably torn (a more liveable kind of ambivalence). This is demonstrated via a discussion of forgiveness, of both others and oneself, noting the importance of a variety of forgiveness that continues to incorporate blame or self-reproach.Less