Theorizing Post-Conflict Reconciliation

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The other is dead

Mourning, justice, and the politicsof burial

Bonnie Honig

In political theory, the problem of the other is usually taken to be the problem of the foreigner, the immigrant, the refugee, perhaps the problem of sexual difference. In response to the problem so conceived, political theorists write books about the ethics and politics of multiculturalism, alien suffrage, the conflicting claims of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, internationalism and democracy, the politics of gender or sexuality in patriarchal societies. These are important, ongoing areas of inquiry.

But what if the other is dead?

That is, how should democratic societies relate to those others who are no longer around to make claims that need to be adjudicated, to ...