The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies

Danielle Celermajer is currently a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She was formerly Director of Indigenous Policy at the Australian Human Rights Commission. She was the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, a Mellon Fellowship, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She has written extensively on transitional justice, human rights, religion, and the political thought of Hannah Arendt, and she recently co-edited a forthcoming book on Hannah Arendt and political judgment.

• Introduction: the apology and political theory; 1. The apology phenomenon; 2. Apologies as speech acts; 3. Judaism's apology: reconstituting the community; 4. The privatization of repentance in Christianity; 5. Australia's divided history; 6. Saying sorry in Australia; 7. Apology's responsibility; 8. Apology as political action; Bibliography.

'An extraordinary inquiry into what political apologies are, why today they are valued and valuable, and how they may be reconciled with liberal democratic norms. Drawing on an impressive range of historical and contemporary sources, Sins of the Nation shows how contemporary politics and political theory can benefit from the wisdom of some of our major religious traditions. It is destined to be a landmark work on the subject.' Geoffrey Levey, University of New South Wales