Guilt

Abstract The book investigates the role of guilt in the global discussion of locally specific legacies of mass violence and injustice. Guilt is an indispensable element in human social and emotional life that surfaces as a central phenomenon in the cultural politics of memory, transitional justice, and the aftermath of violence. The nuances and complexities of various national and historical guilt configurations foster insights into guilt’s transformative possibilities. The book interweaves specific case studies with broader theoretical reflections on the conditions that turn the emotional, legal, and cultural phenomenon of guilt into a culturally transformative dynamic that repairs relationships, equalizes power dynamics, demands new social orders, and creates literary, artistic, and religious productions and performances. The authors examine different case studies on the basis of discipline-specific definitions of guilt, ranging from psychology to law, philosophy to literature, religion to history and anthropology. The contributors generally approach guilt less as a personal emotion than as a socio-legal, moral, and culturally ambivalent force that mandates ritual performance, political negotiation, legal adjudication, artistic and literary representation, and intergenerational transmission. The book calls for a more nuanced understanding of the world’s—and history’s—diversity of guilt concepts and the cultivation of cultural strategies to negotiate guilt relations in specific religious, cultural, and local ways.