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

discourses good deeds may lead to salvation and evil deeds to
damnation; with major implications for the afterlife, and with no
appeal. The relation is not only Self-Other, but Self-Self.
Both discourses agree on one point: a harmful act implies not
only trauma suffered by the victim, but also guilt suffered by the
perpetrator./32/ The norm of reciprocity demands that the harm is
equalized; trauma for trauma (you suffer my suffering), and guilt
for guilt (we are equally bad you and I). X has done horrible
violence to Y, the guilt is unbearable. If Y also does something
horrible to X the two become equally guilty as when Germans
equalized Auschwitz with Dresden-Hamburg after the Second World
War. Revenge, retaliation balance both accounts.
According to this logic there are two ways of getting equal
in a violent exchange: when the perpetrator suffers a trauma of
(about) the same magnitude, and when the victim suffers a guilt of
(about) the same magnitude. In the act of retaliation the two
approaches blend into one, both traumatized, both guilty, no doubt
a reason why revenge is so frequent. "You are guilty of hurting
me, I am guilty of hurting you, we are equal you and I". By this
logic the traumatized party has an asset: the right to have a
trauma inflicted on the perpetrator. And the guilty party has a
deficit: "One day he may come back and do to me what I did to
him". The former may lead to trauma-chains through history,
vendettas; the latter to a politics of paranoia./33/
Both trauma and guilt may be deposited in the world trauma
and guilt banks. The traumatized has a violence credit, and the
guilty a violence debit. Both carry interest over time, at the
risk of inflation gnawing at the capital. Amortization is long
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