The intuitive appeal of learning from the past to alter the present

Tine Destrooper

doi:10.14324/111.444.jhs.2021v52.003

Abstract

Examining the past to better understand our present and future and even to change the way we act in the present and future, is something that has instinctive appeal. The argument is often made that by better understanding the context within which past harm took place, and the societal factors that contributed to it, we will better be able to recognize these circumstances when they re-emerge and be able to prevent harm from happening again in the future...

Highlights

Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the journal’s standard double blind peer-review, where both the reviewers and authors are anonymised during review
A domain of study and practice that has concerned itself with this topic is transitional justice, which asks how societies can cope with legacies of large-scale violence
I explore what the role of internment has been in transitional justice: has it been acknowledged as a specific rights violation that has a dynamic and logic? How prominent is it in the narratives we create about past harm? And how is internment memorialized? This is an important question because the logic of inter nment can be argued to be vastly different from that of other kinds of arbitrary or unlawful detention in that it arguably has a preventive function

Summary

Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England

For instance, including the Japanese-American internment museum in Arkansas or the Tuol Sleng prison museum and memorial site just outside Phnom Penh, are meant to be institutions that morally educate their visitors, and promote human rights and an ethic of “never again” That this particular cultural form of commemoration is increasingly used globally as one of the central mechanisms for addressing past violence, Sodaro argues, suggests that it is believed to be an especially effective mode for critical engagement with the past that can translate into a more democratic and peaceful present and future.

The narratives that shape our justice imagination

Where do we go from here?