Imagining Justice: The Politics of Postcolonial Forgiveness and Reconciliation (review)

Reviewed by: Imagining Justice: The Politics of Postcolonial Forgiveness and Reconciliation Erin Hollis (bio) Imagining Justice: The Politics of Postcolonial Forgiveness and Reconciliation, by Julie McGonegal. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009. xiv+ 234 pp. $75.00 (cloth). At the end of her fantastically nuanced exploration of forgiveness and reconciliation in the disparate work of four postcolonial authors, Julie McGonegal makes a call against cynicism, arguing that she "will not be so disingenuous as to suggest that truth production provides a ready-at-hand model for a harmonious world, but it might just save us from disgrace, from the problems of cynicism and complacency, that thwart the chance of transformation" (185). Such an assertion is timely as cynicism has been the recent subject of questioning from popular culture to politics. A turn away from cynical reaction, which at best risks being dismissive and at worst encourages complete apathy, to a more hopeful, yet informed and complicated, engagement with such issues seems to be on the minds not only of politicians, including Barack Obama, but also of comedians, such as Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien. McGonagal has put her finger on an idea that is echoing throughout our current media, and from this idea, has created a subtle and fascinating exploration of forgiveness and reconciliation, specifically within political reconciliation movements, that seeks to "challenge the assumption of many postcolonial and postmodern critics that forgiveness and reconciliation necessarily entail a rush to closure, a repression of memory, or a recuperation of power" (19). McGonegal begins her study with an examination of literary theorists and political thinkers and their disparate but often complementary approaches to reconciliation and forgiveness. Exploring the theories of postcolonial and postmodernist critics, such as Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Homi Bhabha, and Wole Soyinka, McGonegal creates a nuanced and unique approach of her own to these issues. McGonegal's study is significant in that she recognizes the limits of all kinds of theory and creates contact between theories that often can be at odds with one another. Her troubling, for example, of the postmodern understanding of "truth" within a postcolonial context demonstrates the complexity and thoughtfulness of her approach. The first chapter also addresses such political figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Frantz Fanon, and Desmond Tutu, using the disparate approaches of these figures to inform the theory that she creates. I find especially enlightening her focus on Tutu's discussion of the Xhosa concept of ubuntu which, while untranslatable, Tutu translates as "speak[ing] to the very essence of being human … It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inorexably bound up, in yours' … We say, 'A person is a person through other persons'" (qtd. in McGonegal 55). With a turn towards an ethical approach to literary criticism, throughout the rest of the text, McGonegal connects the concept of ubuntu and its approach to humanity to the way that four authors, David Malouf, Michael Ondaatje, Joy Kogawa, and J.M. Coetzee, approach reconciliation and forgiveness within their own particular countries. The second chapter of Mcgonegal's text looks at David Malouf's novel, Remembering Babylon, exploring his treatment of Australian aboriginal reconciliation [End Page 166] processes. In the chapter, McGonegal details how the character Gemmy Fairley, who is a British subject raised by Aborigines, walks the line of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures. She explores the difficulties of a reconciliation project where the non-indigenous seek to belong by appropriating the "natural" connection to the land of the indigenous population. This chapter highlights the dangers of reconciliation, especially when those in power are not interested in redressing any wrongs, but rather in usurping the space of the powerless. She also highlights the ambivalence in the novel, with its ending's focus on love. The third chapter addresses Michael Ondaatje's depiction of the ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka in his text Anil's Ghost. McGonegal examines the implications of a conflict in which no side is considered "justified" in their actions and examines the typically Western concept of retribution for wrongdoing. Rather than perpetuating a violent cycle of retribution, McGonegal suggests that Ondaatje is putting forth an "ethics of caring for the other" (21...

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