Publisher's Synopsis
Viewing the search for "coming to terms with the past" as a form of politics, John Torpey argues that there are major differences between reparations for the living victims of past wrongdoing and reparations for the descendants of such victims. More fundamentally, he argues that claims for reparations comprise a relatively novel kind of politics that involves a quest for symbolic recognition and material compensation for those seeking them-through the idiom of the past rather than the present. This reissue is the first paperback edition and contains a new preface by the author.