OFFICIAL APOLOGIES IN THE AFTERMATH OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Abstract: This article examines the uses of official apologies for massive human rights abuses in the context of democratic transitions. It sketches a normative model of apologies, highlighting how they serve to provide some moral and practical redress for past wrongs. It discusses a number of contributions apologies can make, including publicly confirming the status of victims as moral agents, fostering public reexamination and deliberation about social norms, and promoting critical understandings of history that undermine apologist historical accounts. The article then presents certain normative criteria that any official apology must satisfy, and concludes with a discussion of several theoretical and practical challenges that apologies face in transitional contexts. It draws on Chilean President Patricio Aylwin's apology for his predecessor's crimes as an illustration of some of the promises and challenges that apologies face.     

Trauma,causality and time: Some reflections: EPISTEMOLOGY STUDY GROUP,PORTO ALEGRE PSYCHOANALYTICAL SOCIETY1

Based on the studies and discussions of the Epistemology Study Group of the Porto Alegre Psychoanalytical Society, the authors aim to connect the notions of psychical determinism with the concept of trauma and temporality, from a perspective of the mind as a complex system. Following consideration of the concept of psychical determinism, they attempt to expand the discussion on causality. They propose that trauma be situated in the body of contemporary psychoanalysis, where emotional experience is favoured over factual events, leading to the need to rethink the concept of trauma and its usefulness. In the same way, in the light of recent developments, the authors revisit the Freudian etiologic equation, with a proposal that an i, for imaginary factor, be included, corresponding to an element of complexity. The question of temporality, connected with trauma and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, is approached within a vision of irreversible time, characteristic of complex systems, far‐from‐equilibrium‐which is how the authors understand psychical functioning.