Remembering Injustice and Atrocity: Whose Responsibility?
Memory in public spaces has shifted in recent decades from honor and gloary to outrage and mourning. In the case of grave wrongs, systemic oppression, and mass violence, an international standard of "obligations to remember" gross human rights abuses is widely cited as a responsibility of states. This responsibility to remember histories of violence is, I will argue, correctly placed but uncertainly grounded. The question of who has a responsibility to remember and why there is such a responsibility are deeply linked. I offer a democratically based rationale for an obligation of state remembrance that has implications for other institutions and for individuals.
Presenter: Margaret Walker, Donald J. Schuenke Chair in Philosophy at Marquette University