The past is evil/evil is past: on retrospective politics, 'philosophy of history, and temporal manichaeism

One of the most remarkable phenomena in current international politics is the increasing attention paid to historical injustice. Opinions on this phenomenon strongly differ. For some it stands for a new and noble type of politics based on raised moral standards and helping the cause of peace and democracy. Others are more critical and claim that retrospective politics comes at the cost of present- or future-oriented politics and tends to be anti-utopian. The warnings about the perils of a retrospective politics outweighing politics directed at contemporary injustices, or strivings for a more just future, should be taken seriously. Yet the alternative of a politics disregarding all historical injustice is not desirable either. We should refuse to choose between restitution for historical injustices and struggle for justice in the present or the future. Rather, we should look for types of retrospective politics that do not oppose but complement or reinforce the emancipatory and utopian elements in present- and future-directed politics. I argue that retrospective politics can indeed have negative effects. Most notably it can lead to a temporal Manichaeism that not only posits that the past is evil, but also tends to treat evil as anachronistic or as belonging to the past. Yet I claim that ethical Manichaeism and anti-utopianism and are not inherent features of all retrospective politics but rather result from an underlying philosophy of history that treats the relation between past, present, and future in antinomic terms and prevents us from understanding transtemporal injustices and responsibilities. In order to pinpoint the problem of certain types of retrospective politics and point toward some alternatives, I start out from a criticism formulated by the German philosopher Odo Marquard and originally directed primarily at progressivist philosophies of history

History from the Grave? Politics of time in Spanish mass grave exhumations

During the last decade, Spanish memory movements have exhumed a great number of mass graves from the Civil War and Francoist repression. This exhumation campaign is often interpreted in psychopathological terms as a natural reaction to a traumatic past and as proving that this past should be healed by a therapeutic memory that fosters closure -- a vision that we call 'trauma-therapy-closure (TTC) time'. Although this vision is in line with widespread 'transitional justice' discourse it should be critically analyzed. We argue that the Spanish situation does not prove the naturalness and universal applicability of TTC time. Although we do identify an influential exhumation group that shares aspects of this TTC vision, its approach is contested by local actors and competing exhumation organizations that engage in alternative politics of time. Therefore we demonstrate how the case of Spain rather reveals how TTC time is actively disseminated and promoted on a local level

Effect of transient event frequency content and scale on the human detection of road surface type

This paper describes two laboratory-based experiments which evaluate the effect of transient event frequency content and scale on the human detection of road surface type by means of steering wheel vibration. This study used steering wheel tangential direction acceleration time histories which had been measured in a mid-sized European automobile that was driven over two different types of road surface. The steering acceleration stimuli were manipulated by means of the mildly non-stationary mission synthesis (MNMS) algorithm in order to produce test stimuli which were selectively modified in terms of the number, and size, of transient vibration events they contained. Fifteen test participants were exposed to both unmanipulated and manipulated steering wheel rotational stimuli by means of a steering wheel vibration simulator. For each road surface type a total of 45 vibration test stimuli were presented to each participant. Each participant was asked to state, by means of a simple "yes" or "no" answer, whether each individual stimuli was from a road surface which was being presented in front of the simulator as a picture on a large board. Using Signal Detection Theory as the analytical framework the results were summarized by means of the detectability index d' and by means of receiver operating curve (ROC) points. Improvements of up to 20 percentage points in the rate of correct detection were achieved by means of selective manipulation of the steering vibration stimuli. The results suggested that no single setting of the MNMS algorithm proved optimal for both two road surface types that were investigated

Perception enhancement system for automotive steering

Laboratory-based experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of the frequency and scale of transient vibration events on the human detection of road surface type by means of steering wheel vibration. The study used steering wheel tangential direction acceleration time histories which had been measured in a mid-sized European automobile that was driven over three different types of road surface. The steering acceleration stimuli were manipulated by means of the mildly non-stationary mission synthesis (MNMS) algorithm in order to produce test stimuli which were selectively modified in terms of the number, and size, of transient vibration events they contained. Fifteen test participants were exposed to both unmanipulated and manipulated steering wheel rotational vibration stimuli, and were asked to indicate, by either “yes or no”, whether the test stimuli was from a target road surface which was displayed on a board. The findings suggested that transient vibration events play a key role in the human detection of road surface type in driving situations. Improvements of up to 20 percentage points in the rate of correct detection were achieved by means of selective manipulation of the steering vibration stimuli. The results also suggested, however, that no single setting of the MNMS algorithm proved optimal for all three road surface types that were investigated

Counter-Imperial Orientalism: Friedrich Berber and the politics of international law in Germany and India, 1920s-1960s

The most trenchant critiques of Western international law are framed around the legacy of its historic complicity in the imperial project of governing non-European peoples. International law organised Europe and its ‘others’ into a hierarchy of civilizational difference that was only ever reconfigured but never overturned. But when analysing the complex relationship between international law and imperialism the differences within Europe—as opposed to a dyadic opposition of Europe versus the ‘rest'—also matter. Within the historical and political constellations of the early and mid-twentieth century, German difference produced a set of arguments that challenged dominant discourses of international law by posturing as anti-imperial critique. This article focuses on the global career of Friedrich Berber (1898-1984) who, as a legal adviser in Nazi Germany and Nehru’s India, was at the forefront of state-led challenges to liberal international law. Berber fused notions of German civilizational superiority with an appropriation of Indian colonial victimhood, and pursued a shared politics of opposition. He embodies a version of German-Indian entanglement which did not abate after the Second World War, emphasizing the long continuities of empire, power differentials, civilizational hierarchies and developmental logics under the umbrella of international law