RHETORICS OF JUDGE-PENITENCE HOW MORAL SUPERIORITY IS PUBLICLY CONSTRUCTED THROUGH ADMISSIONS OF PAST WRONGDOING Bernhard Forchtner A thesis submitted to Lancaster University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2011 ProQuest Number: 11003569 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11003569 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT Given the increasing number of public admissions of wrongdoing by official representatives of states, other institutions and individuals, as well as the subsequent scholarly attention directed to this phenomenon, this thesis investigates one potential misuse of such practices. Here, I take Albert Camus' novel The Fall as a starting point and ask if such admissions cannot ultimately be directed against 'others' through rhetorics of judge-penitence. Such an argumentative pattern aims to project the in-group as a penitent sinner which has faced its dark past and thus learnt the lessons provided by history. This creates, in turn, the possibility to construct an 'other' discursively as having failed to do so, i.e. as being morally inferior. Utilising Critical Discourse Analysis in the context of the debate over the Iraq crisis in 2002/3 in three European countries - Germany, Austria and Denmark - I focus on the (mis)use of self-critical references to the Holocaust and World War II in general. Through a qualitative analysis of particularly argumentative sections of broadsheet newspapers in each of these countries, the study illustrates the, albeit restricted, existence of such a phenomenon as well as its varieties. By exploring Maurice Halbwachs' notions of collective memory, (non-)constructionist approaches aiming to explain the rising significance of admissions of wrongdoing and Charles S. Peirce's semiotics in the context of the public sphere, I explain the influence of different historical contexts and national narratives on the existence and realisation of rhetoric(s) of judge-penitence. By applying Jurgen Habermas' Critical Theory when elaborating the moral significance of memory, I theoretically justify normative evaluations of both admissions of past wrongdoing and their rhetorical misuse. In conclusion, and going beyond my chosen test cases, the thesis illuminates how admissions of wrongdoing may be (mis)used in political discourse. 2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my PhD supervisors, Andrew Sayer and Ruth Wodak, for their hard work and constant advice, often making this thesis different from what I initially imagined but always a more fruitful piece of work. I would also like to thank Jan Ifversen and Christoffer Kplvraa from Arhus University, Denmark for helping me to organise my research stay there and for their illuminating discussions. This stay - as well as the entire thesis - would have not been possible without the financial support of two organisations. My wholehearted thanks thus go to the Austrian Academy of Sciences for supporting me with a generous scholarship and the Economic and Social Research Council for paying the significant tuition fees. Thanks go also to my colleagues Alexander Dworzak, Marko Markovic, Alexandra Polyzou, Paul Sarazin and Manuel Winkelkotte for their insightful discussions. Finally, I want to thank my parents for their support over the last 30 years; clearly, I would have never come so far without them. My biggest acknowledgment must, however, go to my family: my wife Simone, my son Max and my daughter Ruth - not only because I was reading, writing or away too often but much more because doing all this would feel utterly pointless without them. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................................................................................................................................................2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................................................................................................................................3 TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................................................................4 LIST OF FIGURES............................................................................................................................................. 7 LIST OF TABLES............................................................................................................................................... 9 ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................................................................ 10 1. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................11 1.1 Overview of the Thesis ..................................................................................................................11 1.1.1 Introducing Judge-Penitence .................................................................................................... 11 1.1.2 The Holocaust, Collaboration with Nazism and World War II ................................................14 1.1.3 Comparing Three Paradigmatic Cases of Relating to the Past ...............................................17 1.1.4 The Crisis over Iraq as a Playing Field for Judge-Penitence ....................................................19 1.2 Research Questions .......................................................................................................................22 1.3 Thesis O utline ................................................................................................................................. 22 2. COLLECTIVE MEMORIES AND/THROUGH APOLOGETIC PERFORMANCES...................................... 25 2.1 Overview of the Chapter .............................................................................................................. 25 2.2 What is Collective Memory? .......................................................................................................... 26 2.3 Apologetic Performances, Collective Memory and Collective Identity ....................................... 32 2.3.1 Introducing the "Age of Apology" ........................................................................................... 32 2.3.2 Public Admissions of Wrongdoing - A Double-Sided Coin .....................................................39 2.4 Explaining Apologies: Psychoanalytical Analogies or the Public Sphere? ....................................43 2.4.1 "Lay Trauma Theory" and Psychoanalytic Analogies ............................................................. 43 2.4.2 "Cultural Trauma" as Narrative ............................................................................................... 46 2.4.3 '"Cultural Trauma'": Epistemology and M orality ................................................................... 48 2.5 Summary........................................................................................................................................ 52 3. THE RHETORIC(S) OF JUDGE-PENITENCE........................................................................................... 54 3.1 Overview of the Chapter ............................................................................................................... 54 3.2 Conceptualising Judge-Penitence ..................................................................................................55 3.2.1 Literary and Historical Background of Judge-Penitence ........................................................55 3.2.2 A More Transparent (Re)formulation of the Concept of Judge-Penitence ...........................57 3.3 Operationalising Judge-Penitence .................................................................................................66 3.3.1 The Toulmin Model of Argument and Judge-Penitence ........................................................66 3.3.2 The Warrant - Making it Explicit ............................................................................................. 69 3.3.3 A Final Note: Rhetorics of Judge-Penitence and/or historia magistra vitae?......................73 4 3.4 Summary.........................................................................................................................................76 4. THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF MEMORY: MEMORY AND CRITIQUE............................................... 78 4.1 Overview of the Chapter ...............................................................................................................78 4.2 Habermas on Language, Morality and the Past ...........................................................................79 4.2.1 Language, Action and Validity ..................................................................................................79 4.2.2 Discourse, Discourse Ethics and (Blocked) Moral Learning Processes ..................................85 4.2.3 Habermas on the Past as a not so Foreign Country ..............................................................