Suchergebnisse

"What responsibility do ordinary people bear for atrocities committed in their names? According to modern democratic sensibilities, responsibility is an individual affair. The idea, as in Exodus (20:5), that the sins of the fathers could be delivered unto the third and fourth generations goes against the grain. It seems to be part of the collectivistic thinking that characterizes modernity off its rails, a pre-modern remain that produces outbursts of racism, nationalism, and genocide. That is not to say that we are not interested in accountability for political crimes. International human rights entrepreneurs have pressed for holding dictators accountable and have supported efforts to obtain reparations and other forms of redress. But we are very careful to avoid charges of "collective guilt," which often sound more like the problem than the solution. We don't want to start a culture war or clash of civilizations!…In contrast to the Mitscherlichs, Sebald is thus very much a man of his times, free of the older orthodoxies of the West German memory wars. For decades, the politics of memory in West Germany was divided between those who feared "too much" memory and those, like Jung and the Mitscherlichs, who believed Germans needed to work through their (collective) guilt if they were to overcome the symptoms of repression. Sebald does indeed pose a strong ethical and political-cultural imperative to remember, but his lecture was controversial because the lost memory it laments is that of German suffering, which heretofore has been the rallying cry of the extreme right. In this regard, Sebald is only one example of a surprising recent interest in the memory of German suffering from the left…. How legitimate is this new interest in German suffering, previously associated with nationalist revanchism and discreditable positions? The answer depends on the purpose…"

Drawing on theoretical reflections & empirical evidence, it is argued that the silencing of guilt in a democracy can be damaging because it (1) prevents the formation of a motivating consensus based on common values & (2) damages the psyches of perpetrators. Silencing of guilt is defined as a process by which the contradiction between actions & norms is left unclear such that one's personal responsibility &, thus, one's liberty is denied. Given that freedom & responsibility lie at the center of democratic political culture, the silencing of guilt threatens the very core of democracy, as has been the case with regard to National Socialism in Germany. The strongest impact of the silencing of guilt in this case has been on the family, where it has damaged trust between parents & children & inhibited the intergenerational transmission of democratic values. It is concluded that the example of the Nazi era can be generalized to other democratic cultures that are dealing with their own experience of the silencing of guilt. D. Ryfe