ABSTRACT
If the act of constitution depends on recasting the present as a point of origin, it is through remembrance that this moment might come to be judged to mark the end of enmity. In Chapter 6, we saw that political reconciliation is initiated by constituting a space for politics, which makes possible an organised remembrance. Political reconciliation is impelled by a historical consciousness, the hope that our present actions will be judged by future generations as having established a new beginning. Such a reconciliatory politics is sustained, I argued in Chapter 7, by the willingness to forgive. Political forgiveness is neither determined by necessity nor conditional on having just reasons to release our transgressors from the consequences of their actions. Rather, it is a free offer to the other to assume responsibility for past wrongs by entering into the play of the world. In Chapter 8, I argued that political responsibility extends beyond accountability for those actions and intentions of which we are authors. Owing to the boundlessness of action, we are politically implicated in injustice as both doers and sufferers. To assume responsibility for past wrongs, therefore, requires not merely that we settle accounts with those wronged but that we join with them in the risky venture of realising a world in common.
