Ethical Restoration after Communal Violence

One of the virtues of La Caze’s book is that it summons a plurality of voices to build her account. She invokes the usual suspects in the post-atrocity literature, but also authors who are less familiar within this scholarship, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Derrida or even Albert Camus. Likewise, although La Caze is rooted more firmly in the continental tradition, she engages the work of analytic philosophers. And when she relies on canonical authors, she draws on them in original ways, that bear directly on neuralgic discussions, as when she delves into the work of Immanuel Kant to shed light on discussions about the importance of building trust in transitional societies. The result is a richly textured and complex work of political philosophy. Alongside the subtle exegesis of the work of these authors, the book examines concrete cases to inform its claims. They range from the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath or the Nazi occupation of France to post-colonial Australia or the abuses in the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. The cases are very diverse, as the author herself admits. This diversity helps La Caze drive home the point that ethical responses to past atrocity must be sensitive to social and political circumstances, a point she is right to underscore. * Contemporary Political Theory *
This book offers to political philosophy a coherent, previously under-appreciated, argument for ethical constraints on political projects of rebuilding fractured communities. Taken as a contribution to a range of interdisciplinary discourses in social and political philosophy, peace studies, sociology, and psychology, the book is notable for its careful analysis of the overlapping concepts of forgiveness, atonement and reconciliation. Its focus on community restoration as necessarily ethical is a distinctive addition to this set of discourses, in which social and political restructuring is often too abstractly theorized to even allow this book’s compelling ethical questions to emerge. -- Tracey Nicholls, Soka University
For a long time, Marguerite La Caze has been at the forefront of efforts to interrogate the nature of ethical restoration in post-conflict situations. In her new book, she takes this timely project to a new level, both in terms of analytical rigour and of interpretive commitments. Analyzing such diverse phenomena as the death penalty, gacaca courts and crimes against humanity, Ethical Restoration After Communal Violence makes a highly original contribution to ongoing discussions around responses to violence and injustice. La Caze masterfully weaves together close readings of some of the stalwarts of contemporary European philosophy (amongst others, Améry, Arendt, Beauvoir, Camus, Derrida and Sartre) with investigations into the moral complexity of punishment, trust, forgiveness, reconciliation, atonement and self-forgiveness. This book is exemplary both in style and substance, elegantly written and full of illuminating observations. Political philosophers as well as scholars of transitional justice will have much to learn from it. -- Mathias Thaler, University of Edinburgh


Evil represents, as Paul Ricoeur, once suggested one of the most significant challenges to thinking, but also one of the most deceitful occasions for nonsense. Marguerite La Caze clearly takes up the challenge without falling prey to the nonsense. Her philosophical account of how we should (and should not) respond to legacies of political violence and oppression is lucid, nuanced, and meticulous. La Caze is sensitive and respectful to the people involved, and she successfully brings together the works of philosophers with witness testimony and interdisciplinary studies of modern experiences with and implications of mass violence. The moral issues arising in the aftermath of after political violence, oppression, and genocide are profound, complex and in need of nuanced and serious philosophical reflection. Marguerite La Gaze provides precisely that. Her discussion of the promises and limits of forgiveness is carefully balanced, and her discussion of the death penalty in response to the most horrific crimes represents a unique contribution to current scholarship on transitional justice. This a book that promotes understanding as well as good practice. It deserves to be read by anyone wrestling with the moral and political issues that arises in societies in need of reconciliation, transitional justice, or decolonization. -- Thomas Brudholm, University of Copenhagen
Marguerite La Caze succeeds in providing a work both provocative and scholarly, deeply engaged with canonical texts yet timely in its concerns regarding hate, shame, forgiveness, atonement, and apology after great harms and communal moral tragedies. I am happy that I can assign Ethical Restoration After Communal Violence to my own students because La Caze writes in clear and direct terms about philosophies in both Continental and Analytical traditions. -- Kathryn Norlock, Trent University