After the end of the Nazi regime, large reparation schemes unfolded over time, first in respect to the restitution of assets and compensation for damages in general. Later in time, post-Holocaust remedies specifically focused on the restitution of Nazi-confiscated art and cultural property, as well as more specific forms of reparations for harm such as slave labour. In recent years, the restitution of cultural property taken in colonial contexts of injustice has become a distinct field of post-colonial remedies, although to date such efforts have not included more general reparation schemes.
All forms and manifestations of restitution, reparation and redress pose the following questions: What exactly is the hermeneutics of these practices? What is their precise purpose? How should they be set up in light of these hermeneutics and purposes? How should they be translated into guiding principles and rules for rule-makers? How should the procedures for deciding about restitution and other measures of reparation and redress be set up? What are common denominators, and what are the differences between existing schemes of restitution, reparation and redress? How are the categories of restitution, reparation and redress intertwined, in particular in relation to compensation? What are the specific features and take-aways of the very prominent practice of the restitution of cultural property? How can the forms and practices of restitution, reparation and redress contribute to recaliberating existing dependency relationships? How can they add to a transitional justice or, to put it in the terminology of the cluster, to a “post-dependency justice”? On the other hand, are there dialectic dynamics? For example, how and to what extent can restitution, reparation and redress rely on, express, continue and perpetuate existing oppression and dependencies or even create new dependencies? The overall aim of this Project thus is to develop first elements of a general – critical – theory of “postd-ependency remedies”.
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