AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles
from top publications available through your library. We live in
a time of regret. Political and humanitarian leaders perform
acts of atonement for historical atrocities, seek reconciliation
between victims and perpetrators of violence and pursue some
measure of justice, whether moral or legal, for the crimes of
history in order to cultivate stronger, more inclusive communal
bonds among various sociopolitical groups. Emblematic examples
of such efforts include the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, perpetual German self-scrutiny
regarding Nazi atrocities, and official apologies for slavery
ratified by former Confederate state legislatures as well as
both houses of the U.S. Congress (among a tidal wave of other
recent official apologies and symbolic gestures of state
contrition). (1) "How are we to explain," sociologists Barry
Schwartz and Horst-Alfred Heinrich ask, "the spreading
contamination of the past, the discovery in every nook