Collective Failure Dept: The release of the Air India inquiry report Thursday will help solidify a public narrative around the deadliest terrorist attack perpetrated in Canada. As it was with Britain’s Bloody Sunday report and apology on Tuesday, or the residential schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission event launched Wednesday , or the inquiry report into the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski to be released Friday , this is a moment when the public will be forced to come to terms with its past, according to Globe And Mail. “The wrongs of the past, whether it’s Air India, or Bloody Sunday or the residential schools, can’t always be measured out materially or legally. Part of dealing with the past means negotiating our moral and political relationships with each other, so we find ourselves taking up a language like apologize, forgive, reconcile, come together,” Prof. MacLachlan said and for the victims and their families, these moments of public reckoning can produce anything from catharsis to anger. Less obvious, though, is the effect they can have on the broader public, which can assimilate a collective failure while maintaining a sense that the moral or practical shortcomings it exposed belong to another time. Alice MacLachlan , a York University philosophy professor, says these concluding chapters share an important undercurrent: a recognition that the past must be dealt with. There’s no statute of limitations on moral responsibility, and the traditional mechanisms of justice aren’t able to deal with these ruptures satisfactorily. As
reported in the news.
Related Webpage
@t time alice, traditional mechanisms
17.6.10
