Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and
Justice. By W. James Booth. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2006. 264p. $42.50.
W. James Booth has written a profound book about memory in relation
to identity and justice in politics. On the one hand, he analyzes
the central place of memory in the constitution of identity: A sense
of continuity over time, the basis and sign of personal or
collective identity, depends on memory. On the other hand, he
explores the central place of memory in doing justice: Justice
requires “a subject of attribution” who can take responsibility or
be held accountable for conduct over time, who also can remember
injury and demand redress. But investment in the past and memory of
injustice, Booth shows, also run against the grain of core elements
in democratic life. Partly, emphasis on the constitutive weight of
the past seems in tension with democratic norms deriving identity
from will or consent, not inheritance or descent. Partly, any
“thick” collective identity, forged by a
particularizing past, seems in tension with
democratic aspirations to universality, and with the globalizing
reality of pluralized and hybridized attachment. Moreover, efforts
to redress past injustices seem impossible to separate from
resentment, binding people to the past and its wounds. Booth's book
is important, then, because it eloquently explores the necessity and
value—but also the costs and dangers—of memory and identity in
politics, especially around the issue of justice. The book is
profound because it evocatively dramatizes tensions it does not
resolve.