In the Name of History / / Joan Wallach Scott.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Central European University Press eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Scott, Joan Wallach,
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest ;, New York : : Central European University Press, , [2022]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: The Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (140 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Introduction The “Historical Operation” -- Chapter 1. The Nuremberg Tribunal, 1946 -- Chapter 2. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996) -- Chapter 3. The Movement for Reparations for Slaver y in the United States -- Epilogue. The “Lessons of History” -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index