Description
In this paper, I consider political apology to be an example of banal nationalism – a routinised and ritualised discourse that gives ontological primacy to the nation state. This, I argue, pertains to both the (anthropomorphised) apologising nation and the recipient nation. What are the implications of this? First, it diminishes the role of forces that transcend the state, such as white supremacy, racial capitalism, and colonial settlement. Second, it homogenises populations and erases cleavages among people and communities (both in the metropole and the colonised society) who have different degrees of culpability for the wrongdoing. This is respect to degrees of individual responsibility but also in respect to class, race, political disposition, and intergenerational culpability. Third, it underscores the problematic idea that the state must be central to transitional justice processes. In reproducing the centrality of the state, the ritual disallows more nuanced approaches to thinking about culpability and victimhood and curtails more imaginative ways to consider reparative processes.
