In the Name of History

Regular price €46.99
20th century
A01=Joan Wallach Scott
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Author_Joan Wallach Scott
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBCC9
Category=JFCX
COP=Hungary
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eq_society-politics
Language_English
Nuremberg
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Political philosophy
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Slavery
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South Africa
World War II

Product details

  • ISBN 9789633863480
  • Weight: 194g
  • Dimensions: 130 x 200mm
  • Publication Date: 10 Dec 2019
  • Publisher: Central European University Press
  • Publication City/Country: HU
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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In this book Joan Wallach Scott discusses the role history has played as an arbiter of right and wrong and of those who claim to act in its name—"in the name of history." Scott investigates three different instances in which repudiation of the past was conceived as a way to a better future: the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996, and the ongoing movement for reparations for slavery in the United States.

Scott shows how in these cases history was not only used to explain the past but to produce a particular future. Yet both past and future were subject to the political realities of their time and defined in terms of moral absolutes, often leading to deep contradictions. These three instances demonstrate that history is not an impartial truth, rather its very meaning is constructed by those who act in its name.

Joan Wallach Scott is professor emerita in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.