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<P>Barkan, Guilt of Nations:</P></DIV>
<P>"Restitution formalized the identity of the Jews as victims (p. 306). I agree - the Jews have become objectivised through reparation campaigns. But Barkan notes this approvingly. Further, "Guilt is a powerful mechanism for transforming daily sentimentality and universal humanitarianimsm into a political agenda. The move to publicize private feelings, as performance and a display of individual pain has become part of the political agenda for victims' rights." (p. 316). And, a final example, he claims that, "Victimization empowers" (p. 317).</P></DIV>
<P>Who is he kidding? Barkan has astutely noted a powerful new trend in international politics, but as Heartfield says he lacks the critical faculty to ask, to whose benefit? Increasingly, guilt is being used in international relations to support the exercise of power. Barkan claims that, "The politics of group guilt is enacted in the twilight zone between international and national politics ... the language of reconciliation and amending historical crimes increasingly becomes a useful mechanism in international relations, especially where NGOs are involved. It presents a vague moral standard that redefines the relationship among groups and in the process rewrites group identities and rights." (p. 317) </P>
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<P>Barkan has an astonishing ability to catalogue cynical and barbarous developments in international politics in the most scathing terms and still come out in favour of them. It seems tragic that so much creativity is wasted on trying to rectify past wrongs, to make good on history, rather than turing to the new forms of global oppression that require 'new thinking', to appropriate the Stalinist cliche.</P>
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<P>I would be interested to hear if anyone has read Wendy Brown's take on this in 'Politics out of History', where she pretends to be against these developments by arguing that rather than trying to create a sense of closure, we should make historical outrages " 'and outrage to the present' " (p. 171). There is a whole industry of restitution now that can be dismissed easily in its more stupidly exaggerated varieties (compensation to Irish Americans for the famine - a claim made by an NY law firm), but which has a real impact on the way that people think about the rights and wrongs of global politics today. </P>
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<P>Michael Savage</P>
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