This chapter reads Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s best-selling novel Dhākirat al-jasad (Memory in the Flesh, 1993). In it, a circular bracelet, the authentic sign of the Algerian woman-nation, grounds the promise of a “true” Arabic in the postcolonial present. Mosteghanemi’s novel imagines a stark separation between the Algerian War – when men were honorable and language was utile – and the ruined Arab present, ruled by banalized words and corrupted men. Her novel adopts a transregional geography, weaving the topoi of Algeria and Palestine together. A self-conscious heir to the transregionalism described in this study, Mosteghanemi retains its Arab scale to great commercial success but gently critiques its collective, male Arab voice. Through the voice of her male narrator, Arab literary constructions of meaning over Algeria are revealed as homosocial exchanges between male intellectuals, bonding them across distance and rivalries. In Memory, literature’s interpretation of Algeria emerges as an autobiographical task, revealing and narrating an Arab intellectual subject to himself and his likenesses.

While victim participation in transitional justice has often been subject to critique, victim movements have also actively expanded and reshaped the field, using its framework to advance increasingly diverse justice struggles. This introductory chapter adopts the lens of ‘victims-as-protagonists’, emphasizing the central role that victim-survivors have played in shaping transitional justice from its inception. It explores the macro-level dynamics that have amplified focus on victims’ roles in scholarship and policy, and maps key strands of existing literature. Against this backdrop, the chapter introduces a new conceptual framework of ‘generations of victim participation’, offering a more comprehensive account of how victims’ agency has shifted throughout three discernible phases: from grassroots activism, to institutional participation, and multi-faceted forms of resistance. Rather than presenting a linear progression, this framework foregrounds the overlapping and intersecting strategies through which victims pursue justice today, and how this calls for a rethinking of transitional justice’s boundaries and methodologies.

Part II covers the period from the emergence of neo-socialism as an independent political force in late 1933 with the formation of the Parti Socialiste de France (PSdF) to its incorporation into, and marginalization by, the anti-fascist Popular Front in 1936. The period immediately following the 1933 schism is often taken to be one in which neo-socialism, unburdened by the doctrinal shackles of the SFIO, could express itself freely and reveal its true colors. Moreover, the fact that the neo-socialists embraced “order, authority, nation” as their watchwords and the fact of their experimentation with a fascisant discourse during a period of political crisis in 1934 appear to lend credence to the notion that neo-socialism was always-already a proto-fascist ideology and thus at the root of Déat’s collaborationist fascism during the occupation. A closer look at this period, however, suggests a more complex and crooked path for the neo-socialists.

This chapter introduces the case of Marcel Déat, a leader of the French Socialist Party who founded one of the main collaborationist parties during the German occupation of France. I define political conversion and argue that accounts of it tend to be marked by a continuity bias. This is true of extant accounts of Déat’s conversion, which emphasize the significance of neo-socialism in determining his trajectory. I argue that this explanatory emphasis on ideological continuity is theoretically and empirically unsound. As an alternative approach, I introduce what I call the practical logic of political conversion, drawing on anti-essentialist and relational theories of political ideologies that treat these as articulated products of classification struggles within political fields. I argue further that the fundamentally discontinuous and relational character of political conversion means that it should be analyzed in terms of what Bourdieu calls “trajectory.” I end with an overview of the book.

The conclusion reviews the evolution of transregional Arabic literature from its emergence during the Algerian War of Independence to its transformations in the twenty-first century. Decolonization catalyzed a new literary practice that sought to express Arab nationalist solidarities and critique emergent forms of oppressive power – including those exercised in the name of Arab collectives. The conclusion touches on the ways authors grappled with the faltering of revolutionary hopes and rise of new cultural hegemonies in the present century, notably the establishment of the Gulf as a major new hub for Arabic literature. The author notes the ironic reception of the decolonization generation and its concerns in the contemporary Arabic novel and the queering of Arabness in diasporic literature. Revisiting a key theme of the book, the conclusion highlights literature’s evolving work to imagine, engage, and contest shared political experiences across the Maghreb and Mashreq. The chapter concludes by affirming the ongoing political vitality of calls for linguistic and cultural pluralism in Algeria, as exemplified by the Hirak protest movement.

As the political crisis of 1934 passed, Déat and the neo-socialists dropped their equivocal posture and returned to the parliamentary preoccupations of their past, merging with other independent reformist socialist parties to form the Union Socialiste et Républicaine (USR). The USR was drawn into the orbit of the anti-fascist Popular Front coalition, but the Popular Front would prove to be a political disaster for the neo-socialists. With the Socialists willing to govern and the Communists emerging as the primary bearers of the Popular Front’s popular-democratic and national-popular mystique, the neo-socialists struggled to distinguish themselves within the political field, resulting in a poor showing in the 1936 elections that brought the Popular Front to power. The Popular Front period was significant for Déat and the neo-socialists’ trajectory, not because it provided a bridge between neo-socialism and fascism, but because it led to the marginalization and disarticulation of neo-socialism.

The most significant late twentieth-century executions in a British Dependent Territory occurred in 1977 when Erskine Burrows and Larry Tacklyn were hanged in Bermuda for a series of politically motivated murders. While previous studies have argued that British ministers could readily have dispensed with the Creech Jones doctrine and prevented these executions, Chapter 5 makes the case that, for political and constitutional reasons, this was not a straightforward proposition, but nor was abandoning Creech Jones a necessary precondition for commuting the death sentences. It further argues that from a long-term perspective, the Bermuda executions were an anomaly rather than a turning point in British death penalty policy. Colonial capital punishment continued to operate into the 1980s much as it had since British abolition, with the British government working behind the scenes to prevent most executions and tolerating periodic political crises over controversial death sentences for fear that advocating abolition would have still more damaging repercussions.

The Directive on Takeover Bids was almost not adopted and has since not been subject to reform, despite not having produced the harmonisation it intended. The chapter contends that this is because the Directive covers very different areas of law, where only some are suitable for harmonisation. The chapter analyses these differences to suggest a possible route for a reformed Directive that may provide actual harmonisation of the areas where such harmonisation is required.

Aggression in an intimate relationship violates commonly held expectations that a romantic partner will be loving and supportive. Partner aggression erodes the quality of a relationship and can cause people to experience significant psychological distress and pain. This chapter critically examines research on features of aggression in relationships, how partner aggression is regulated and maintained, and interventions and efforts to address partner aggression. We aim to convey the current state of research on partner aggression and suggest new directions for research.

This chapter reviews the literature on responses to wrongdoing in close relationships. We begin by discussing what we know about transgressions as they occur in relationships. We then explore research and theorizing on three related but distinct ways of responding to wrongdoing (forgiveness, unforgiveness, and revenge) that vary in the nature of the response, the research attention they have attracted among those who study relationships, and the extent to which they are viewed as appropriate, desirable, and healthy. We also consider directions for future research and comment on how current methodology and theory can be extended in this area. We ultimately encourage relationship scholars to approach investigation of relational wrongdoing with openness to the possibility that forgiveness may not always and inevitably be the best way forward by exploring when, for whom, and under what circumstances both forgiveness and its less favourably viewed alternatives produce desirable versus undesirable outcomes.