The Ghost in the Constitution offers a reflection on the political use of the concept of historical memory foregrounding the case of Spain. The book analyses the philosophical implications of the transference of the notion of memory from the individual consciousness to the collective subject and considers the conflation of epistemology with ethics. A subtheme is the origins and transmission of political violence, and its endurance in the form of symbolic violence and “negationism” in the post-Franco era. Some chapters treat of specific “traumatic” phenomena such as the bombing of Guernica and the Holocaust.

'Intellectually engaging, thoughtful, coherent, and logically developed. Resina writes with an elegance of style uncommon among scholars ...the most apt synthesis and expansion of ideas on memory and latency that I have read in recent years.'

David Herzberger, Distinguished