Enacting Oblivion

After periods of major political change, incoming regimes have often declared “acts of oblivion” in which courts and sometimes citizens are commanded to forget what happened under the preceding regime. But how are courts and citizens supposed to obey this command? Must they not remember what it is they are commanded to forget? If so, obedience is only possible at the price of disobedience. This paper suggests this paradox raises important issues about the concept of memory. It argues that in order to understand acts of oblivion we need to distinguish between two aspects of memory: the cognitive, concerned with the transmission of information, and the conative, concerned with the transmission of will and affect. This distinction provides a way of avoiding the more overtly paradoxical features of acts of oblivion. However, there remain significant difficulties facing the political project of forgetting.     

Family relationships and social competence during late adolescence

Data from a large sample of late adolescents was used to examine associations between family relationships (reported closeness to parents and siblings) and perceived social competence. Significant positive relationships were found between family bonds and the social competence measures, which included social self-esteem, instrumentality, expressiveness, shyness, and degree of satisfaction/ease in same- and opposite-sex peer relationships. There was no evidence of differential effects of sibling versus parent relationships upon adolescent social competence.This project was supported by NIMH Grant 5 R01 MH34570.Received Ph.D. from Northwestern University.