No Apologies? The Role of Apology for Structural‐Historical Injustice

ABSTRACT

During this era of political apologies, a new literature has emerged in historical injustice interrogating the relationship between structural and historical injustice, with various theories conceptualising the relationship in different ways. Interestingly, ‘apology’ rarely appears in this literature. In this article, I consider why that is the case and I argue that it is a mistake. While the ‘conventional’ definition of political apology does not lend itself to understandings of historical injustice through the lens of structural injustice, recent conceptions of ‘transformative’ apologies are compatible with and desirable within the structural injustice framework. To begin, I outline a conventional view of political apology. Then I briefly survey the literature on structural‐historical injustice and I suggest reasons as to why apology is rarely discussed: the problems of traceability, disentangling structures and events, authenticity, and restoring a moral baseline. However, recent literature on political apologies has stressed their transformative potential, encouraging liberal democracies to reflect on who ‘we’ want to be. I argue that transformative apologies, understood as a moment of re‐founding or re‐constitution of society, can and should be incorporated into structural injustice theory, committing societies to a future in which such a structural injustice will not recur.