Can memory safeguard us from evil? Legislators around the world, particularly in France, appear to believe that it can, and have sought to preserve the collective memory of crimes against humanity in law. Written in the sceptical tradition of Montaigne, Tzvetan Todorov’s short essay argues that such ‘memorial laws’ often have the opposite effect: they prevent us from confronting evil by encouraging us to construe it as something outside of ourselves, as fundamentally inhuman rather than as a perversion of human nature. ‘The memory of the past,’ Todorov concludes, ‘will serve no purpose if it is used to build an impassable wall between evil and us, identifying exclusively with irreproachable heroes and innocent victims and driving the agents of evil outside the confines of humankind. This, though, is precisely what we usually do.’

Seagull Books London Ltd | Hardback 92 pp. |ISBN: 9781906497439