Working through the Past: The Victory of Adwa Revisited

Abstract

If working through the past is going to heal a nation, it has to come from within. This paper explores two senses of historical responsibility: the responsibility we bear for healing the wounds of the past or working-off-the-past, and the responsibility we may have in fulfilling the promises of the defining moments of the past (redeeming or cashing in on the past). By utilizing these two conceptual tools, the paper carves out a normative space Adwa ought to occupy in a just and ethical revitalisation of our collective memories. It argues that the process of coming to terms with divisive historical legacies must pass ‘the Adwa test’ that it ought to be comprehensively liberating, universalizable, and thus has the ability to translate ‘the past as future.’ The victory in Adwa passes on the responsibility to birth our future in the image of its Volksgeist or spirit of the people (in the Hegelian sense indicating dialectical unfolding of the self, and not in the Fichtean sense where the past is defined in puritan terms) and by cultivating a national character commensurate with it. This paper posits that engagement with the positive experience of freedom from colonialism and the attendant sense of individual and collective autonomy that Adwa provides is one part of the equation for what Adorno calls “reconciliation” of the subject with object (history). The other part is a genuine recognition of the collective memory that past harm brought forth in the present, which we often reject as inherently unlike us. While Adwa offers the ground we stand on, embracing historical contradictions will serve as a condition for genuine reconciliation. The responsibility to come to terms with, atone for, and rectify the legacies of our history must be underpinned by an equal responsibility to fulfil Adwa’s promises.