Skirmishes on the Temporal Boundaries of States

Abstract

This paper focuses on the special difficulties of resolving collective disputes, specifically among states, that result from past mischief. Past events are fixed, casting a permanent shadow. So how can collectivities cope with the “dead weight” of history and address past-oriented grievances? In considering this question, I introduce the notion of a state’s temporal boundary, and argue that changes in this boundary, analogous to the more familiar changes in territorial borders, can lift the shadow of the past and relieve past-oriented grievances. I then connect this conceptual framework to the distinction between history and memory as two different modalities of relating to the past. I maintain that a proper understanding of a state’s relationship to the past, and in particular the possibility of changes in a state’s temporal boundaries, offer a way to retain historical knowledge of past wrongs without the rancor and acrimony that mark this knowledge when it assumes the form of collective memory.