Preface to the Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Surfacing of Subterranean History
2 An Anatomy of Reparations Politics
3 Commemoration, Redress, and Reconciliation: The Cases of
Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians
4 Forty Acres: The Case of Reparations for Black
Americans
5 Post-Colonial Reparations: Reparations Politics in Post-Apartheid
Namibia and South Africa
Conclusion
Notes
Index
JOHN TORPEY is Presidential Professor of Sociology and History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center. He is the author or coauthor of eight books, including The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Material, Mental (Rutgers University Press).
"History is written by the winners, it is commonly said. But
heritage—history shaped to present purposes—is increasingly
fashioned by the losers. Ex-colonial peoples, minorities, tribal
indigenes everywhere demand reparations—atonement for the suffering
of those deprived of autonomy and agency, repatriation of treasures
purloined or pillaged or purchased, compensation for past
injustices… Among millions maltreated by history, John Torpey
notes, an unseemly contest for the status of worst-victimized often
ensues. Torpey's short and scintillating book, Making Whole What
Has Been Smashed, explores reparation demands ranging from official
apologies and admissions of wrongdoing to memorials, cash payments,
health and welfare aid, and property return to groups and
individuals. Chapters on post-apartheid Namibia and South Africa,
on Japanese-American and Japanese-Canadian Second World War
internees, and on legacies of slavery that still disable African
Americans suggest his topical scope. But the book's greatest merit
is its profound and lucid critique of the causes and political,
legal, economic, and symbolic implications of reparation claims.
Compassionate erudition, deft demolition of holier-than-thou
posturing, and clarity of expression make this a minor classic
reminiscent of Paul Bator's 1983 The International Trade in Art.
Torpey rightly links current campaigns to redress wrongs with the
broader trend, consequent on widespread public pessimism,
refocusing attention from the future to the past."
*The Times Literary Supplement*
"Torpey has written on reparations politics in a manner that is
both informed by scholarship and usefully oriented toward
influencing relevant thinking."
*American Journal of Sociology*
"After reading this book, I am struck with the question of to whom
to give reparations for the past injustices. In a country where the
victims of abuses do not live, and persons or groups who ask for
reparations are not merely the descendant of the victims, is it
evenhanded to give reparations? Torpey puts forth this quandary in
exemplifying the case of reparations for Black Americans,
Japanese-Americans and Japanese-Canadians. This analysis of
trans-generational justice is one of the precious contributions of
this book that all researchers of transitional justice as well as
students of political science, sociology, history and philosophy
must consider. His invaluable analysis of the reparations
movements, drawn from an interdisciplinary perspective, calls to a
wide range of readers."
*International Journal on World Peace*
"Anyone interested in the history, politics, sociology or
philosophy of reparations should read John Torpey's brilliant
analysis of global reparations politics. Torpey uses a superb blend
of historical sociology and philosophy to offer his readers an
informed, skeptical, yet not entirely unsympathetic look at the
reparations movement."
*Canadian Journal of Sociology Online*
"While the reader might not share Torpey’s dissatisfaction with
past-oriented politics, his analytical insights into the rise of
the past as an object of politics are fresh and perceptive…
Theorists and practitioners of past-oriented politics would be well
advised to take on Torpey's challenge and ask themselves why they
pursue past-oriented politics, and how these politics relate to
projects of the future."
*Ethics & International Affairs*
"Torpey’s book, both theoretical and empirical in its analysis, is
unquestionably the most clear-headed work available on the several
international campaigns to redress past injustices. Keenly
insightful and analytical, Torpey is no polemicist favoring or
opposing reparations. Rather, he is a smart social scientist who
unravels the persistent human concern of reckoning with the past
and righting history’s wrongs."
*North Carolina Historical Review*
"'When the future collapses, the past rushes in.' With this
formidable insight, John Torpey launches his penetrating study of
the many varieties of reparations politics around the world. In
exemplary fashion, Torpey clarifies what is at stake in a global
movement seeking recompense and apology for the past's insulted and
injured in an era inhospitable to ideals for future reconstruction.
This reflective work is a splendid starting point for thinking
through not only reparation ideas but some of the other large
quandaries of reform thought today."
*author of The Intellectuals and the Flag*
"Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics is
comprehensive, thoughtful, and almost compulsively readable. John
Torpey's willingness to query the unquestioned pieties of our era's
therapeutic politics is a tribute to the rigorousness of his
approach. The tone of the work is consistently cool, analytical,
and tactfully skeptical, no small achievement given the highly
charged nature of these debates."
*author of Who Owns Native Culture?*
"Why do we so regularly hear admonishments to 'come to terms with
the past?' In reply, John Torpey identifies momentous trends in a
splendid, far-ranging inquiry: the collapse of transformative
politics and the end of the Cold War, the emergence of the
Holocaust as a template for the rectification of historic wrongs,
the mobilization of the historically victimized, and the mix of
human rights commitments with the juridification of politics.
Critical, yet balanced and humane, Torpey presents a savvy,
deeply-informed analysis that should be contemplated by all who
seek a better global future. I couldn't recommend him more
enthusiastically."
*author of The Holocaust in History*
"The German campaign of 1904 to end Herero resistance in the
northern part of the colony of South-West Africa culminated in the
forced movement of the Herero into the Kalahari Desert, or
capturing these people and herding them into concentration camps.
Torpey does an excellent job of explaining how this massacre of the
Herero, considered by many to have been a dress rehearsal by the
Germans for the Holocaust, engendered reparations initiatives
in Namibia that focused primarily on monetary compensation, rather
than on an apology by the German government"
*JSTOR: Association for the Study of African-American Life and
History*
"A seminal study that is impressively informative and
thought-provoking, "Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On
Reparations Politics..." [is] unreservedly recommended"
*Midwestern Book Review*
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