Identification, atonement and the moral psychology of violation

On Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light

Bibliographic Data

ID21159637
AuthorsAlan Norrie (0000-0002-1205-5282, School of Law, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume18
Issue4
Pages383-401
Publication date2019-08-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Critical Realism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1476-7430 • E-ISSN: 1572-5138
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14767430.2019.1656922
OpenAlexW2970760729
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited15

This essay considers the nature of mourning and melancholia in light of Patrizio Guzman’s film, Nostalgia for the Light. It examines the position of three women dealing with the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, in which their close family members were disappeared and murdered. It views their experiences through the lens of a moral psychology that is at once ethical and psychoanalytical. A key concept in both fields is loving identification, and this is linked to a desire to atone, in the original meaning of making whole or being ‘at one’ with another. It is argued that such a conception lies at the core of a moral psychology of guilt, and the analysis is then developed into an understanding of mourning and melancholia. The women in the film are understood as involved in a dual struggle: to mourn their lost loved ones, and to resist efforts to make them see themselves in melancholic terms

Democracy · Dictatorship · Epistemology · Freudian slip · Melancholia · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Psychology · Social Psychology

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