Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence [Hardcover]

Martha Minow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0807045063 | ISBN-13: 978-0807045060

With Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Martha Minow, Harvard law professor and one of our most brilliant and humane legal minds, offers a landmark book on justice and healing after horrific violence. Remembering and forgetting, judging and forgiving, reconciling and avenging, grieving and educatingMinow shows us why each may be necessary, yet painfully inadequate, to individuals and societies living in the wake of past horrors. She explores the rich and often troubling range of responses to massive, societal-level oppression. She writes of the legacy of war-crime prosecutions, beginning with the Nuremberg trials. She explores whether reparation - such as the monetary awards given to Japanese-Americans for internment during World War II, or art, such as Holocaust memorials - can be a basis for reconciliation after immeasurable personal and cultural loss. Minow also writes with informed, searching prose of the extraordinary drama of truth commissions in Argentina, East Germany, and most notably South Africa, and in the process delves into the risks and requirements involved in hearing from victims, the dynamics of gender, and the value of even imperfect gestures in the midst of these riveting experiments in justice and healing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Although mass atrocities are not unique to the 20th century, organized response to such violence has taken new forms, some of which offer hope of some small redress to the victims of war and genocide. In the groundbreaking and timely Between Vengeance and Forgiveness, Harvard Law School professor Martha Minow explores the benefits and drawbacks of a variety of forms of settlement.

For those who have recoiled in horror and outrage at collective violence in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and elsewhere, this book--with chapters titled "Trials," "Truth Commissions," "Reparations," and "Facing History"--is a primer on how the world, and individuals, might respond to such acts once the shock subsides. Minow resists the idea that compensatory measures such as war-crimes tribunals and financial payback can ever bring true closure for those who have suffered. "Legal responses," she writes, "are inevitably frail and insufficient." Nevertheless, Minow advocates addressing these atrocities in a formal way: "The victimized deserve the acknowledgment of their humanity," she asserts, "and the reaffirmation of the utter wrongness of its violation." --Maria Dolan

From Kirkus Reviews

A leading legal scholar's judicious examination of our varied reactions to mass violence and their relative potential for healing people and nations. From the Holocaust to apartheid South Africa and Rwanda, 20th-century collective violence has challenged societies to deal with the aftermath. And Minow (Law/Harvard; Not Only for Myself, 1997) makes her own significant contribution to this effort by sketching out a ``lexicon of potential responses to collective violence.'' Through a series of chapters highlighting specific forms of responses in their historical contexts, she formalizes a vocabulary for assessing the ways in which society is able or unable to deal with irreversible loss (and the emotional damage caused by large-scale violence). First she contemplates the possibility of bridging reactions of vengeance and forgiveness, raising one of her central arguments: the healing power of therapy for victims, bystanders, and even offenders. In further chapters, she discusses the history of war-crimes prosecution, focusing on the complex legacies of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following WWII, and reparations, drawing on the case of the US government and former Japanese-American internees. Minow's chapter on truth commissions proves to be the most engaging, given its timeliness amid the ongoing debates about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Citing the importance of direct personal narratives, she argues that when society prioritizes healing and the restoration of human dignity, a truth commission may serve better than a prosecution actually does. Her final chapter assesses the value of public monuments, educational programs, and amnesty. Some readers will feel frustrated by Minow's admitted ``resistance to tidiness'' in drawing conclusions and by her rationalized tightrope walk between the extremes of idealism and cynicism. But this is a mostly enlightening exploration of a thorny subject. (For another look at these questions, see Wole Soyinka, The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness, p. 1442.) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press (November 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807045063
• ISBN-13: 978-0807045060
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Here is a lady who is not afraid to tackle the big issues., October 16, 2000

By 

Lisa Sharlach (Birmingham) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Paperback)

For anyone interested in international law or human rights, this is a must-read. I am assigning this book to my undergraduates this semester because, although the subject matter is complex, Minow's prose is clean and spare. Minow does a terrific job of summarizing the episodes of mass violence of the 20th century AND the literature in legal and political studies on war crimes, human rights violations, and justice. I don't always share her optimism that solutions can be found, but I cannot think of another author who grapples with this difficult subject matter quite as gracefully or comprehensively.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exercise in the problems of mass violence, July 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Paperback)

Martha Minow has done her research. She carefully explored the different approaches to mass violence without over-moralizing or answering any of the unanswerable questions. Drawing on history, she charts a course for the human rights community today. This is a readable book for people who are new to the concept of human rights and those who have phD's in the field. Best of all, it does not leave you with a feeling of a weight upon your shoulders. Instead, it is some-how optimistic about a future that addresses the mass violence. I underlined about half of this book, and would recommend it to anyone.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History, September 25, 2010

By 

Carmen Magda - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Paperback)

Book is in a very good condition, it was a good service. It was a book required in a Seminar of Law and Justice in Law School of Indianapolis