Shaping the Past in the Transition to Democracy: Law, Memory, History and the Problem of Social Cohesion

Abstract

This essay reflects on the experience of time as a factor of social cohesion and on its attributive force with respect to the configurations of law. In this regard; a decisive component is the simultaneity of regimes of historicity and the consequent dispute about the past. The article points out its prominence in the transitions from dictatorship to democracy and; in particular; in that of Italy in the second half of the 20th century. The discussion then turns to the dispute about the memory; to consider the question of the rights to truth; to restitution and to resentment; highlighting how history; if declined in a victimological perspective; can make an original contribution to understanding the problem of the justiciability of the past.

Keywords

• experience of time
• transitional justice
• right to restitution
• right to resentment
• democracy