The Past Can't Heal Us
The Dangers of Mandating Memory in the Name of Human Rights

Lea David exposes the dangers and pitfalls of mandating memory in the name of human rights in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Lea David (Author)

9781108817103, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 June 2022

255 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.385 kg

'Her innovative approach and original argument mark an important scholarly contribution, inviting further research on globalization and memory.' Katarina Ristic, Connections: A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists

In this innovative study, Lea David critically investigates the relationship between human rights and memory, suggesting that, instead of understanding human rights in a normative fashion, human rights should be treated as an ideology. Conceptualizing human rights as an ideology gives us useful theoretical and methodological tools to recognize the real impact human rights has on the ground. David traces the rise of the global phenomenon that is the human rights memorialization agenda, termed 'Moral Remembrance', and explores what happens once this agenda becomes implemented. Based on evidence from the Western Balkans and Israel/Palestine, she argues that the human rights memorialization agenda does not lead to a better appreciation of human rights but, contrary to what would be expected, it merely serves to strengthen national sentiments, divisions and animosities along ethnic lines, and leads to the new forms of societal inequalities that are closely connected to different forms of corruptions.

1. Introduction
2. Human rights as an ideology? Obstacles and benefits
3. What Is moral remembrance?
4. The institutionalization of moral remembrance: the case study of Palestine and Israel
5. The institutionalization of moral remembrance: the case study of Western Balkans
6. Human rights, memory and micro-solidarity
7. Mandating memory, mandating conflicts.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], Comparative politics [JPB], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]