Organization: Magali Bessone, (Panthéon-Sorbonne Univ.), Axel Honneth (Columbia Univ.)
Alliance Program, Columbia University – Panthéon-Sorbonne University
A United Nations report entitled “Report on Recognition, Reparations, and Reconciliation” (A/HRC/EMRIP/2019/3/Rev.1), focusing on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, was enacted on September 2, 2019. It states that remedies, redress and restitution are operative concepts in order to acknowledge the burden colonization imposed on indigenous peoples, to recognize these peoples and their rights, and to strengthen their participation in relevant shared institutions. However, although the right to reparation has been recognized in international law, the path toward securing reparations for historical crimes (slavery, colonialism, segregation, imperialism, genocide) has been fraught with setbacks. Since most of the crimes were perpetrated by and against collectives, on a vast scale and at a long-term historical remove, the usual paths of criminal and civil law are ill-suited to respond to them. We believe that a nonjurisdictional form of reparative justice, transformative in its explicit aims, political rather than judiciary in its logic, is better suited than strictly jurisdictional forms. Such justice requires a moral-political relational approach in which recognition is key. In the academic literature on reparations and reparative justice, in political theory and philosophy, as well as in law, history, social sciences and economics, the term “recognition” is often mentioned; but the normative status of the concept of recognition is unclear, and the concept is under-theorized. Recognition typically refers to various elements: instrumental process leading to reconciliation, ideal form of social-ethical relations that reparations should seek for, or symbolic dimension of repair, alongside more material or legal aspects.
In this workshop, our aim is to map and elucidate the conceptual and normative relations between recognition and reparations, in order to firmly establish the principles of a theory of reparative justice in which recognition plays a key role. Our ambition is to constitute a working team of scholars and young researchers, from Alliance partner institutions and beyond, that will contribute to informed and collaborative discussions on reparations and recognition. We hope to promote a cross-disciplinary dialogue and to give young researchers an opportunity to present their work, in order to enhance common knowledge, reduce disciplinary misunderstandings, discuss underlying assumptions methodological limitations, and highlight new directions for future research on reparative justice.
**Part I of this workshop will take place in Paris. Part II will take place in NYC, more information to come.**