The Penitent State: Exposure, Mourning and the Biopolitics of National Healing
Paul Muldoon, "The Penitent State: Exposure, Mourning and the Biopolitics of National Healing"
English | ISBN: 0198831625 | 2023 | 336 pages | EPUB | 789 KB
English | ISBN: 0198831625 | 2023 | 336 pages | EPUB | 789 KB
This book asks a deceptively simple question: what are states actually doing when they do penance for past injustices? Why are these penitential gestures - especially the gesture of apology - becoming so ubiquitous and what implications do they carry for the way power is exercised?
Drawing on the work of Schmitt, Foucault and Agamben, the book argues that there is more at stake in sovereign acts of repentance and redress than either the recognition of the victims or the legitimacy of the state. Driven, it suggests, by an interest in 'healing', such acts testify to a new biopolitical raison d'état in which the management of trauma emerges as a critical expression of attempts to regulate the life of the population.
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