Abstract
Apology is a necessary component of moral repair of damage done by wrongs against the person. Analyzing the role of apology in the aftermath of atrocity, with a focus on the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, 1994, this chapter emphasizes the role of recognition failures in grave moral wrongs, the importance of speech acts that offer recognition, and building mutuality through recognition as a route to reconciliation. Understanding the US role in the international failure to stop the ’94 genocide raises the question of how any response could mitigate a world-shattering wrong like genocide. With a focus on survivors, this chapter explains the concepts of recognition harm and spirit murder to illuminate what survivors experience and need. The third section develops a theory of apology as offering recognition to the victim of wrongdoing – through both the act of speakingto and through its content. The chapter examines US President Bill Clinton’s 1998 apology to Rwandans, to understand it as an apology, and to see how it began reconciliation between Americans and Rwandans. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the inter-related signi fi cance of apology and material reparations.
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Notes
- 1.
Gourevitch (1998, 34, emphasis). It is important to hear this “cry” as a call, like the low-tech “911,” automatic, without involving emotional investment in the particular event.
- 2.
Louise Mushikiwabo, testifying at a U.S. Congressional hearing in 2004, said, “all that was needed was a clear and unequivocal signal to the government of Rwanda back then, that violence will not be tolerated…Rwanda depended very heavily on foreign aid, therefore the international community had an easy and sure tool to use with a government that no longer did its primary job, protecting its people. The planners of the Rwandan genocide were intelligent and world savvy, and there is no doubt that they could have taken the clue from the international community’s words if not actions.” USHR (2004, 71).
- 3.
Dallaire (2003, 141–151), Neuffer (2002, 116–117), Power (2003, 343), Shattuck (2003, 76). Consider Shattuck: “The catastrophic consequences of failing to act at an early stage—when minimal intervention might have saved lives—are magnified because the world paid little attention to the warnings coming from Rwanda. By denying General Dallaire and his troops the tools they needed to do their job, and then withdrawing them at the very moment when they might have been able to stop the violence, the international community sealed the fate of 800,000 Rwandans.” For an argument that military success would have been unlikely, see Kuperman 2001.
- 4.
An Associated Press wire story, 25 March 1998 says: “At the time, the United States was still stunned by the deaths of U.S. Rangers in Somalia in October 1993 and feared further military intervention in Africa.” http://www.news-star.com/stories/032598/new_clinton.html The Radio Netherlands Internet Desk, 23 August 2001: “Fearing to get embroiled in yet another vicious civil conflict, the UN, the United States, Rwanda’s former colonial ruler Belgium and other nations did little to prevent the killings. The Rwandan-based UN Force known as UNAMIR, which could have helped protect civilians, was withdrawn on the advice of US and other diplomats,” (http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/northamerica/us010823.html). See “Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide,” for an OAU panel discussion of the influence of Somalia on US policy in West Africa. (OAU Doc. IPEP/Panel (May 29, 2000) at 12.33), Prunier (1995–2005). Gibney and Roxstrum, note 38, Taylor (1999, 3–4), Gourevitch (1998, 149–150), Kuperman (2001, 4), and Power (2003, 335).
- 5.
Arendt here references the story of Lazarus’s miraculous resurrection from the dead, found in The Bible at John 11: 1–46. Briefly, Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha, and all three were friends of Jesus. Jesus was in Bethlehem when Lazarus died in Bethany, about 2 miles away (15 furlongs). Martha went to find Jesus, and met him on the road, returning to Bethany; she criticized Jesus for failing to save Lazarus. Jesus told her to go get Mary, and meet at Lazarus’s tomb. Lazarus had been dead for 4 days. At the tomb, Jesus wept over the death of his friend, and then told those assembled to move the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb (a cave). Jesus said a prayer of thanks to God, and cried out “Lazarus, come forth” (11:43). Lazarus is said to have arisen from the tomb, still bound in linen wraps. Lazarus, like Jesus, is a symbol of resurrection.
- 6.
The concept is drawn from Hegel, and has had many incarnations in existentialist, phenomenological, and idealist philosophies that developed since Hegel. The most recent and thorough is found in the writings of Axel Honneth. My concept of recognition harm is independent of but compatible with Honneth’s account of recognition as foundational to ethics. See Honneth (2007).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
See Stolorow et al. (2002, especially chapters 7 and 8). Also De Zuleuetta (2007).
- 11.
Minow (1998) writes that the trial process is not the best means to meet the “twin goals” of gaining public acknowledgment of wrongs done, and allowing survivors an official forum for which to develop and within which to present their own narrative accounts of those wrongs is a better way of achieving those goals. For that, she argues, truth and reconciliation commissions, of the sort developed in South Africa, are better suited (Minow 1998, 58–59, and elsewhere. See also Kritz 1996, Rotman 2000).
- 12.
Who seeks reconciliation, and under what circumstances, matters. My concern with the Rwandan demand for an explanation is about a process set in motion by atrocity survivors. One Rwandan, whose family had been stuffed live down a latrine and left to die, said: “People come to Rwanda and talk of reconciliation. It’s offensive. Imagine talking to Jews of reconciliation in 1946. Maybe in a long time, but it’s a private matter” (Edmund Mrugamba, in 1995, quoted in Gourevitch 1998, 240). Personal decisions about how to cope with the aftermath of genocide are ongoing, excruciating, and beyond prescription by any analysis an outsider could offer. In contrast, it is not a private (personal, individually decided) matter whether reconciliation is possible between Rwanda and the US or Belgium, and at issue is what those who looked away can do now.
- 13.
Lazare maintains that acknowledgement is the essential condition of apology–without it, there is no real apology. Govier (2002) also emphasizes the role of acknowledgement, but holds that moral apology includes a request for forgiveness. Neither Lazare’s view nor mine requires this; forgiveness is a response that the recipient of the apology might choose, but the apology itself is not about what the perpetrator may try to get from the victim.
- 14.
- 15.
Austin (1962, 47, emphasis added). “Happiness” here is a technical term, akin to Austin’s use of “felicity.” Others might call it success, but Austin is not emphasizing outcomes at the expense of processes. Both the process and the outcome factor into the happiness of the speech act.
- 16.
- 17.
Could one coherently say: “I apologize and I am not sorry”? Would it count as an apology? Tavuchis claims that “sorrow is the energizing force of apology” (Tavuchis 1991, 122) so on his view such a claim would be a contradiction. It is not so clear. The first clause marks the illocutionary force, while the second simply states the speaker’s attitude, so the second clause does not necessarily undermine the first. Such a conjunction would still have the illocutionary force of apology but it would fail to achieve the perlocutionary effects at which apologies typically aim. It is unlikely to be an effective apology.
- 18.
Lazare, for example, says, “in the end, it is reparations—or the lack of them—that determine the success of the official apology” (Lazare 2004, 65).
- 19.
Specific Promises: 1. Early warning systems: “I am directing my administration to improve, with the international community, our system for identifying and spotlighting nations in danger of genocidal violence.” 2. Readiness: “we must as an international community have the ability to act when genocide threatens” 3. Economic support: US will donate $2 million to Survivors Fund, “continue our support in the years to come, and urge other nations to do the same, so that survivors and their communities can find the care they need and the help they must have.” 4. Legal Infrastructure: Citing the importance of re-establishing the rule of law, Clinton promises $30 million from his Great Lakes Initiative to reestablish criminal justice system. 5. International Court: Clinton pledges to support establishment of a permanent international criminal court, guided by United Nations.
- 20.
Thanks to Claudia Card for this observation. See also Gill (2000, 23).
- 21.
This use of “moral imagination” should be neutral across ethical theories and is not bound to Burke’s or Kirk’s or others.
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Acknowledgments
A very early version of this paper was presented as “Apology, Promises, and the Politics of Reconciliation” at “Pathways to Reconciliation and Global Human Rights”, Sarajevo 2005, sponsored by the United Nations Development Program in BiH, and The Globalism Institute of RMIT, AUS. I am grateful to Claudia Card, Danielle Celermajer, Tom Ferguson, Robert Gakwaya, Alice MacLachlan, Mary Kate McGowan, Robert K. Shope, Arthur Ripstein, Ajume Wingo, Ed Herman, David Gibbs, and Janet Farrell Smith, for suggestions and criticisms.
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Tirrell, L. (2013). Apologizing for Atrocity: Rwanda and Recognition. In: MacLachlan, A., Speight, A. (eds) Justice, Responsibility and Reconciliation in the Wake of Conflict. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5201-6_10
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