From Narrative Redemptions to the Ethical Value of Micrological Reparations

In this article, I intend to critique a particular understanding of reparative narratives that seek, at all costs, to reconcile and move beyond evil and suffering, through a redemptive claim that ideologically aims for coherence, unity and the reconstruction of a totality which fails to give due credit to the fragment and obscures other ethically significant potentialities and meanings inherent in reparative narratives. The article is organised as follows: in the introduction, I distinguish between “restorative” and “reparative” narratives. In the first section, I trace the meaning of ‘restore’ back to a form of repair that I intend to critique. I then bring into light a concept of “reparative narrative”, which has considerable ethical potential. In the second section, I further explore the characteristics that a reparative narrative must possess, distancing myself from both the defeatist view that every narrative is structurally doomed to reconcile at all costs and the idea that narrative can solve all problems. In the final section, I provide examples to illustrate what constitutes a good reparative narrative. Ultimately, it will become clear that effective reparative storytelling helps build resistance by transforming past evil and suffering into new contexts of meaning without erasing them. It enables us to temporarily displace ourselves from the experience of evil by facilitating the sharing of experiences and allowing us to imagine lives free from domination