AFTER VIOLENCE: 3R, RECONSTRUCTION, RECONCILIATION ...

the objective here. The perpetrator and the victim, either or
both may be neither the sender nor the receiver of any harm but
suffer from hallucinations, or trying to make themselves
important, whatever. In this text, however, we shall assume that
subjective awareness and objective realty coincide, leaving out
all the interesting problems when they do not.
32. The point here is not whether that guilt is perceived or not
by the perpetrator, even at a subconscious level. The line of
thinking here is inspired by Martin Buber, Schuld und
Schuldgef hle, Heidelberg, 1958, through the excellent analysis in
Paul Leer-Salvesen, Menneske og straff, Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1991, particularly chapter 8, "Skylden som
fenomen og emosjon", pp. 384-390. For Buber, where harm has been
guilt arises, existentially, even if there is no trace, conscious
or subconscious, in the perpetrator. Awareness of the guilt is
another matter, guilt according to the law still another. This
guilt has to be recognized, and that recognition is traumatic
because of the consequences for Self, relative to Other (the
victim) and to that third entity, God/State/Public.
33. For an application of this principle to US foreign policy,
see Johan Galtung, Global Projections of Deep-Rooted U.S.
Pathologies, Fairfax: ICAR, George Mason University, 1996.
34. An obvious example would be Israel(is) taking their holocaust
trauma out on the Palestine(ians). In principle we could imagine
trauma chains winding forwards and backwards in history, totally
oblivious of the "original trauma", if there is any such thing.
Thus, the Germans certainly were traumatized by the First world
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