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Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South Africa

Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South Africa In both Australia and South Africa a state‐sponsored discourse of reconciliation has been deployed as a tool of national integration and state building. This usage has tended to encourage a politics of selective memory that runs contrary to the spirit of reconciliation as recognition of different views of the nation. This article seeks to recover (and promote) a more positive concept of reconciliation by treating it as a discursive, democratic space in which different versions of the national story can be acknowledged and negotiated. The cases of Australia and South Africa are used in a mutually illuminating way to explore what “telling the truth” about the past might mean and how such “truth‐telling” might help restore legitimacy to liberal states confronted with a “broken moral order”. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian Journal of Politics and History Wiley

Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South Africa

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References (2)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0004-9522
eISSN
1467-8497
DOI
10.1111/1467-8497.00303
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In both Australia and South Africa a state‐sponsored discourse of reconciliation has been deployed as a tool of national integration and state building. This usage has tended to encourage a politics of selective memory that runs contrary to the spirit of reconciliation as recognition of different views of the nation. This article seeks to recover (and promote) a more positive concept of reconciliation by treating it as a discursive, democratic space in which different versions of the national story can be acknowledged and negotiated. The cases of Australia and South Africa are used in a mutually illuminating way to explore what “telling the truth” about the past might mean and how such “truth‐telling” might help restore legitimacy to liberal states confronted with a “broken moral order”.

Journal

Australian Journal of Politics and HistoryWiley

Published: Jun 1, 2003

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