Reparations and the Human with David Eng

“Reparations and the Human,” my forthcoming book, explores the history of reparations in relation to Cold War Asia, beginning with New World discovery and indigenous dispossession and concluding with the biopolitical aftermath of genocide in Europe and atomic destruction in Asia. Reparation is a key term not only in political theory but also in psychoanalysis, in particular object relations, yet the two notions are rarely discussed in relation to one another. “Reparations and the Human” examines how political and psychic genealogies of reparation can supplement one another in our conceptions of the human and human rights after genocide and nuclear holocaust.

This talk, “Absolute Apology, Absolute Forgiveness,”  comes from the final chapter of my book. It investigates the history of uranium mining and specifically “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb detonated by the U.S. military over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Much of the world’s uranium supply is mined from indigenous lands, and the uranium for Little Boy, too, came in part from the territories of the Sahtu Dene, an indigenous people in Great Bear Lake, Canada. Ignorant at the time of the intended purpose and destination of the ore they helped to mine, the Sahtu Dene nonetheless felt implicated once they learned of Hiroshima’s fate. In response to the disaster, they sent a delegation to Hiroshima to apologize. I will explore the Sahtu Dene’s response to the atomic bombing by extending Jacques Derrida’s concept of “absolute forgiveness” to develop a corollary concept: “absolute apology.”