An Unsettled Past as a Political Resource

Abstract

This chapter examines recent debates about transitional justice and argues against attempts at ‘overcoming the past’ or ‘settling the past’. Drawing on Cornelius Castoriadis's theory of the social-historical, it shows that engaging with the past is an inescapable dimension of societal existence and its self-creative process. It contends that such past is not necessarily a burden but can become a political resource in the (re)construction of political community. The resourcefulness of the past, however, is contingent upon standing or permanent political institutions and normative frameworks. The unsettled past, the chapter suggests, becomes a valuable political resource only if it remains unsettled and, as such, a vital part and live matter of everyday political processes through the interconnected workings of collective political responsibility and political imagination.