The popularity of mechanisms of transitional justice and truth recovery, the unfreezing of ethnic and territorial disputes following the end of the Cold War, the burgeoning ‘memory boom’, and the growth of identity politics have all served to pull the past onto the modern political stage. What is key to all these texts is that each grapples with the problem of the past not simply as the outworking of claims for restitution and acknowledgment, but as an expression of changes in political culture. In different ways, each book argues that important aspects of ‘dealing with the past’ and ancillary projects of reconciliation have been hazily defined, and each searches for a sharper focus. Manfred Berg and Bernard Schaefer's collection of essays Historical Justice in International Perspective is a solid work attempting to ground some of these debates in a series of case studies. The editors note the diffusion of demands for historical wrongs to be righted; abuses range from systematic discrimination to state crafted policies of repression and genocide, and forms of reparation and redress are similarly numerous. This plethora of social phenomena are however loosely grouped under an umbrella concept of ‘historical justice’ about which there is little real consensus (p. 4). Associated concepts such as victim and survivor are similarly shown to be blurry in definition, weighed down as they are with the loaded baggage of identity politics and their political instrumentalism. In this flux, debates about the possibly deleterious effect of memory on historical scholarship, or memory as a resistance to master narratives promulgated by the academy and government, and the potential social dysfunctionalism of too much memory, are touched off (pp. 7–13). In any collection of essays, there is a danger of overall incoherence of argument and encapsulation of case studies, but the editors and their authors are successful in resisting this. The book begins with essays by John Torpey and Angelika von Wahl delineating the ideological frames and power structures behind this broad politics of memory and serve to set up a deep focus politico-cultural backdrop that helps the reader engage with the various case studies. The cases under review are geographically widespread, but are effectively grouped into three analytic sections; one dealing with reparation and restitution, another dealing with memory and recognition, and a final dealing with issue of reconciliation. As a result there is sense of breadth but never real drift whilst reading the material.

The first essays are a most worthwhile introduction. Torpey's piece is an exceptional recapitulation of his thesis that our preoccupation with turning back to right the wrongs of the past is simply a function of the desiccation and enervation of modern ideologies—or the lack of them. The univeralist future is collapsed and now ‘entrepreneurs of memory’ push through the wreckage and mine the past in what can threaten to become a ‘competition of victimhoods’, as much as a quest for entrenching human rights norms (pp. 21–22). Von Wahl examines the political factors that influence government involvement and civil society recognition ultimately leading to successful claims for reparation. Questions of morality or need are less important here than the organisation of a political lobby, and von Wahl's stirring argument is that there is a sharp bifurcation in the type of lobby that can most successfully put its case: Reparation claims based on ethnicity or nationality have greater weight than those grounded in gender or sexuality. The former may be framed in terms of national characteristics and processes of nation building, whereas the latter struggles to be recognised in terms of a distinct community (p. 62). Identity politics thus has its own tiered system.

Of the case studies, most are solid, well-written and illuminate sometimes-forgotten processes of injustice and reparation, such as the examination of the indigenous peoples of Greenland. Others are particularly strong, such as Bronwyn Leebaw's examination of the tensions between elite bargaining and the condemnation of past abuses that marked the (oft-researched) South African transition; and Julie Fette's study of the use of state and sub-state apology in France, which can be conceptualised not as a forgive-and-forget ending, but as a catalyst for a wider process of critical enquiry into Vichy abuses and war-time anti-Semitism. Andreas Higer's study of Russia's limited rehabilitation of those who fell foul of its Soviet era apparatus is extremely timely and engaging, given the struggle over memory in that region. I think, however, it would benefit from a deeper analysis of the reasons behind the rejuvenation of an adapted Soviet nostalgia and valourization, which he correctly underlines as a major reason for this failure to give due recognition to foreign victims of Stalinism. This collection of essays is tailed off with an effective bookend essay by A. James McAdams, that serves as a glass of cold water in the face for those who think that processes of historical justice are about drawing a line under the past. Rather, they are marked by constraints, an ‘illusion of resolution’, and a credible threat that the issues will continue to return (pp. 296–303). None of this means that historical or transitional justice should not be attempted, but rather we should break apart any notion of a justice ‘template.’

Attempting to reconcile with the past is thus a high stakes game from which it is hard to draw a real return. This notion clearly interests Ernesto Verdeja as he asks, “What does it mean to be reconciled with the past and with each other, and how should this be achieved? What in other words are the stakes in reconciling?” (p. 2). Verdeja seeks to contribute to an understanding of this by developing a “normative theory of reconciliation that differs from prevailing approaches” (p. 3). The author feels that theories of reconciliation are currently too hidebound, or haunted by, models of reconciliation and dealing with the past that are either idealised forms or shot through with too much compromise, and thus risk acting as apologia for past abuses. In contrast, he aims to navigate these clashing rocks with a framework all his own. It is worth quoting to get the sense of it:

The first section of this definition is informed by agonistic approaches, a theoretical framework that usefully contributes directly and indirectly to many of Verdeja's arguments. But the second part of his definition seems more problematic, unless it were more carefully nuanced. In divided societies, communalised political identities often act as the primary political fracture lines in the generations before conflict, persist through it, and emerge in rude health after the ending of political violence. The tone and quality of their interactions may change past the period of violence, but it is essential to realize that those political divisions pre-existed the period of conflict, and may easily survive it. This may be setting reconciliation far too high a bar.

Verdeja's piece is strong on conceptualisation and provides clear lenses with which to examine and advance his thesis. Reconciliation is multi-faceted, inhabiting four different levels—the political, the institutional, civil society, and the interpersonal, and he deftly examines each in turn. But clarity of focus does not mean rigidity, and Verdeja is at pains to note the messiness and disharmony of the reconciliatory process across these levels—political and institutional friction plays its part. The normative concepts that provide a centre of gravity for a successful process of dealing with the past and potential reconciliation are well laid out too. These are Truth (necessary for the development of trust), Accountability (survivors are less likely to reconcile with an order based on impunity), Victim Recognition (the acknowledgment and inscription of past wrongs), the Rule of Law (reforming discredited institutions and moving the norms of dispute resolution to a process wholly within the law), and chief amongst all, Mutual Respect. This latter concept seems much informed by agonistic thinking that stresses the need for thick normative strata of respect and reciprocity beneath a shifting, bubbling mass of political contestation, and is a particular strength of his argument. There is a skilful use of international examples too that provides illustration to his conceptualisation, particularly in discussing the forms that these processes may take. His discussion of the use of apologies as both a simple tool of acknowledgment and a complex future-focused mechanism allowing critical readings of histories, promises of practical redress, and a renegotiation of moral relationships is particularly well done (pp. 80–84).

For a most thorough and particularly original examination of the use of apology as a political instrument, we must turn to Danielle Celermajer's The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies. The author is curious to disentangle this form of political expression and activity, trace back its lineage, and account for its modern utility. Celermajer notes that the use of apologies by states and other institutions to acknowledge past wrongdoing has been under-examined and suggests that this might be because it is seen as an odd form of politics, one that defies secular, modern conceptions of justice, as well as expressing an ingrained suspicion that such forms of symbolic activity are saccharine, populist fluff. In contrast, the author notes the growing popularity of such expressions and provides a detailed case study of the apology movement in Australia in relation to wrongs committed against the indigenous population. She also ties her arguments to examples in Europe, America, and other regions. For her, apology is consistent with a “late modern malaise” (p. 3), a disappointment in rationalist approaches for bettering society and achieving justice. However, she argues, if we look beyond the “delimitations of modern liberal politics, we are likely to see a world far more enchanted by ritual and storytelling and embedded with narratives of sin and redemption than our disciplines counsel us to believe in” (p. 3). For her, the cultural wellsprings of this yearning and ritual activity flow directly from Judeo-Christian traditions, and we must make a bold leap passed our modern liberal consensus of how things are done to understand the reach for apology. Her case is persuasive, but she perhaps oversells the modern state's suspicion of ritual, collective constitutive action, and a sense of sacral covenant. If one were to attend any large war commemoration, it clearly demonstrates that these forces have long been at play in the modern state.

The structure of the book is imminently clear, and the author groups her chapters under a ‘combination of lenses.’ The first lens examines apologies as speech acts by means of international survey and novel categorization. The second lens looks at understandings of the collective apology within Judaism and Christianity, charting their development and waxing and waning as a means of acknowledgement and group activity. This latter is important as it refutes a modern liberal individualist critique that collective apologies are a category mistake. The final lens looks at the dynamics of modern political apologies and provides some of the sharpest definition and, indeed a partial guide for praxis. Collective political apologies are defined as a means of ‘cool’ intervention and suited to periods when the violent fracture in relations is somewhat distant, but at a period when those normative breaches still resonate (p. 252). Apology is depicted as a future-focused “re-covenanting” act that forms new constitutive relationships and behaviours, and one that has been facilitated by the relative decline in the authority of the nation state. Celermajer also provides a deftly conceived, if necessarily idealised, index of what a successful apology might look like. With its cultural long lens, and shrewd political eye, I would strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in the study of the more constitutive forms of justice and reparation, such as truth commissions and memorials, and not just those interested in an examination of apology. Each of the reviewed works succeed, in their own way, with constructing new conceptualisations or typologies, and providing apposite case studies, that will serve to remove some of the fuzz from debates about the linkages between new and old political cultures and approaches to past conflict or injustice.