Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-d5ftd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-25T19:04:25.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Atrocity Paradigm and the Concept of Forgiveness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Robin May Schott
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I discuss Claudia Card's treatment of war rape in relation to her discussion of the victim's moral power of forgiveness. I argue that her analysis of the victim's power to withhold forgiveness overlooks the paradoxical structure of witnessing, which implies that there is an ungraspable dimension of atrocity. In relation to this ungraspable element, the proposal that victims of atrocity have the power to either offer or withhold forgiveness may have little relevance.

Information

Type
Symposium
Information
Hypatia , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Fall 2004 , pp. 204 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by Hypatia, Inc.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Remnants of Auschwitz. Trans.Heller‐Roazen, Daniel. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Améry, Jean. 1999. At the mind's limit. Trans.Rosenfeld, Sidney and Rosenfeld, Stella P.London: Granta Books.Google Scholar
Arcel, Libby Tata. 1998. Sexual torture of women as a weapon of war: The case of Bosnia‐Hercegovina. In War violence, trauma and the coping process, ed. Arcel, Libby. Copenhagen: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.Google Scholar
Arcel, Libby Tata. 2002. Torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of women; psychological consequences. In Torture: Quarterly Journal on Rehabilitation of Torture Victims. Copenhagen: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Askin, Kelly Dawn. 1997. War crimes against women. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Google Scholar
Brison, Susan. 2002. Aftermath: Violence and the remaking of the self. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2002. The atrocity paradigm: A theory of evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Card, Claudia. 2003. The Cambridge companion to Simone de Beauvoir. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herman, Judith Lewis. 1992. Trauma and recovery. London: Pandora.Google Scholar
Krog, Antjie. 1999. Country of my skull Essex: Vintage.Google Scholar
Landesman, Peter. 2002. A woman's work, New York Times Magazine, September 15. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/15/magazine/15RWANDA.html/ex (accessed September 17, 2002).Google Scholar
Nieman, Susan. 2002. Evil in modern thought: An alternative history of philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Oliver, Kelly. 2001. Witnessing: Beyond recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Stiglmayer, Alexandra, ed. 1994. Mass rape: The war against women in Bosnia‐Herzegovina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Ziarek, Ewa. 2001. An ethics of dissensus. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar