The Download of the Week is Skirmishes on the Temporal Boundaries of States by Meir Dan-Cohen. Here is the abstract:
-
This paper focuses on the special difficulties of resolving collective
disputes, specifically among states, that result from past mischief.
Past events are fixed, casting a permanent shadow. So how can
collectivities cope with the “dead weight” of history and address
past-oriented grievances? In considering this question, I introduce the
notion of a state’s temporal boundary, and argue that changes in this
boundary, analogous to the more familiar changes in territorial
borders, can lift the shadow of the past and relieve past-oriented
grievances. I then connect this conceptual framework to the distinction
between history and memory as two different modalities of relating to
the past. I maintain that a proper understanding of a state’s
relationship to the past, and in particular the possibility of changes
in a state’s temporal boundaries, offer a way to retain historical
knowledge of past wrongs without the rancor and acrimony that mark this
knowledge when it assumes the form of collective memory.
Highly recommended.