Postdoctoral Researcher, Princeton University, USA

October 2017 until September 2018

In cooperation with Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst

Funded by The Cluster of Excellence “The Formation of Normative Orders”, Goethe University Frankfurt in cooperation with Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

Amy Hondo investigates questiones of Historical injustice, collective responsibility, political theory and indigenous rights, justice and the
politics of race, ethics and public policy, feminist theory, and the politics of time.

Research project title:
Structural Injustice, Social Trust, and the Presence of the Past

Research Abstract:
Past injustices have a powerful hold over the present. Consider indigenous rights claims in the Americas and Australia, calls for reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, ethnic minority and national claims for colonial traumas, and demands for the recognition of war crimes in Asia. These examples motivate the intuition that past injustice continues to generate strong moral and political obligations in the present. However, for pragmatic, principled, and philosophical reasons, there remains intense resistance to the idea that present persons ought to be held responsible for wrongs committed by prior generations.
In my dissertation, Untying Knots: History, Injustice, and Political Responsibility, I untangle the fraught discourse on historical injustice in order to understand what counts as the injustice, who counts as wronged and responsible, and why history matters. In the American context, a legacy of injustice continues to shape the moral and material landscape of the present. I offer a forceful critique of recent work in political philosophy and show that assumptions about time and causation limit theorists‘ ability to engage with the full injury and injustice experienced by American Indian and African American communities. I go on to develop a theory of responsibility for past injustice that identifies and responds to the normative consequences of long-standing patterns of interaction between communities. This research contributes to literature on historical injustice, group responsibility, inequality, reparations, and indigenous rights claims.

Publications:
Dissertation Title: Untying Knots: History, Injustice, and Political Responsibility

Events:

8 February 2018, 11 am
»An Unjust Condition is Distinct from the Injustice of Its Persistence. Continuity-Dependent Features of Historical Injustice«
Fellow Kolloquium im Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften der Goethe-Universität