Can humanity be divided into good and evil? And if so, is it
possible for the good to vanquish the evil, eradicating it from the
face of the Earth by declaring war on evildoers and bringing them
to justice? Can we overcome evil by the power of memory? In "Memory
as a Remedy for Evil," Tzvetan Todorov answers these questions in
the negative, arguing that despite all our efforts to the contrary,
we cannot be delivered from evil.
In this work on evil, memory and justice, Todorov examines the
uses of memory and the spate of memorial laws in France in order to
show how memory has failed as a remedy against evil and how efforts
to come to grips with past evil through trials and punitive justice
have failed as well. Todorov locates the fatal flaw of all these
approaches in our erroneous relationship with evil as alterity, the
distinction that we draw between ourselves and others that allows
us to imagine ourselves in the appealing role of hero and victim
and confine others to the role of villain and criminal.
Similarly, in his analysis of the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal,
Todorov argues in favor of restorative justice, which "seeks not to
punish but to restore relations that should never have been
interrupted" between former perpetrators and former victims.
"Memory as a Remedy for Evil" is a powerful and timely work that
asks that we recognize the good and evil within each of us--and
reminds us that it is only by coming to terms with evil and trying
to understand it that we can hope to tame it.
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